Central Asia Research Paper

No. 1, August 2012

On the Road to “H”: Narcotic Drugs in Soviet Central Asia

By Alisher Latypov

ABSTRACT the significance of a further “H” – that which stands for a ‘historical perspective’ – and provide a detailed According to a book published in the 1960s, “H is for overview of the history of historical writings on drugs heaven; H is for hell; H is for heroin.” But in the ever- in Central Asia. To expose numerous myths, as well as growing literature on opiates in Central Asia, the the key phases of formation and reinterpretation of manifold meanings of “H” have been intertwined with Soviet drug knowledge, I draw upon an extensive the absence of any serious attempt to study the history analysis of a broad spectrum of sources and demon- of narcotic drugs in the region. As most of the litera- strate what archival documentation and other materi- ture was produced in the past two decades, recent als may or may not reveal. I suggest that without seri- discussions of drugs in Central Asia are deeply en- ous attempts to engage and re-engage with the ‘new’ trenched within the discourse of ‘narco-jihad’, ‘Islamic old Soviet sources, we will be bound to repeat the extremism and fundamentalism’, ‘insurgency’, ‘terror- abundant inaccuracies which exist in secondary litera- ism’, ‘security’ and ‘stability.’ Lacking in these accounts ture and effectively to reinforce the misrepresentation is sensitivity to the Soviet historical roots of many of drugs in Central Asia as irrelevant until ‘yesterday.’ questions that besiege various groups concerned with In conclusion, I discuss the implications that this paper the subject of drugs in Central Asia today, and the im- has with regard to our approaches to the drug ‘prob- portance of viewing this topic in its full historiograph- lem’ in Central Asia and reflect on some of the ques- ical contexts. Throughout this paper, I aim to highlight tions that need to be addressed in future studies.

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

INTRODUCTION questions that besiege various groups concerned with the subject of drugs in Central Asia today, According to a book published in the 1960s, “H is and to the importance of viewing this topic in its for heaven; H is for hell; H is for heroin.”1 But in historiographical contexts.2 the ever-growing literature on opiates in Central Asia, the manifold meanings of “H” have been in- One of the main focuses of my research on drugs tertwined with the absence of any serious at- in Central Asia, and more narrowly in Tajikistan, tempt to study the history of narcotic drugs in the is therefore to raise awareness of the basic prem- region. For many observers, drugs in Central Asia ise that we can understand little about the con- have either been cultivated and consumed for temporary ‘narko-situation’ (to borrow from the centuries, or they represent an issue that barely local drug vocabulary) in the region without ex- existed until the demise of the Soviet Union. De- amining the cultural, social, economic, legal and spite the divergence of perspectives in these two medical domains of narcotic drugs in Central Asia types of accounts, they often serve to achieve one in the past. Key to this understanding is the com- common objective. Both portray an ostensibly plex political dynamic underlying the process of static image of drugs from time immemorial to transformation of these domains for over a cen- the last decade of the twentieth century, and tury of Tsarist and Soviet rule. minimize the significance of drugs during the So- viet past, suggesting that no transformations of However, before we engage with the analysis of the local drug scene (in the most extensive mean- any of the above aspects, it is vital to examine ing of this term) occurred during the twentieth how the main body of existing knowledge on century to merit our attention. We are (mis)led to drugs in Central Asia has been constituted and conclude that knowledge of the post-Soviet peri- the conditions in which this happened. Through- od alone is sufficient for our understanding of the out this paper, I aim to highlight the significance meanings of narcotic drugs and the ways in which of a further “H” – that which stands for a ‘histori- Central Asians relate to them. cal perspective’ – and provide a detailed over- view of the history of historical writings on drugs In such texts, drug-related statistics, with all their in Central Asia, for two reasons. First, to date, no limitations, start at best from the early or mid- author in any language has comprehensively 1990s, and so do the descriptions of grounds for written on the historiography of narcotic drugs in and responses to the increasing drug ‘supply’ and this part of the world. Second, without an inti- ‘demand’ in the region. Yet, as most of this litera- mate understanding of the making of Soviet drug ture was produced after September 11, 2001, re- knowledge, we will be compelled to replicate and cent discussions of drugs in Central Asia are underpin many of the myths about the supposed deeply entrenched within the discourse of ‘narco- ‘nonexistence’ of the Soviet ‘drug problem’ until jihad’, ‘Islamic extremism and fundamentalism’, recently, which is exactly what is often happening ‘insurgency’, ‘terrorism’, ‘security’ and ‘stability.’ right now both in mass media and academia. Lacking in these accounts is sensitivity to the So- viet (and pre-Soviet) historical roots of many To expose some of those myths, as well as the key phases of formation and reinterpretation of Sovi- 1 Isidor Chein, Donald Gerard, Robert Lee, Eva Rosen- et drug knowledge, I draw upon an extensive feld, with the collaboration of Daniel Wilner, Narcotics, analysis of a broad spectrum of sources and Delinquency and Social Policy: The Road to H (London: demonstrate what archival documentation and Tavistock Publications, 1964), 3. I would like to thank Professors Wallace Mandell and James Anthony, my tu- tors during the Hubert H. Humphrey (perhaps the most 2 On a similar situation with regard to the study of Mus- important “triple H” experience of my life) Fellowship lim culture and Islam in Central Asia see Adeeb Khalid, Program at the Johns Hopkins University, for first men- Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central tioning this book to me and for everything else I have Asia (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of learned from them. I am very grateful to Guy Attewell, California Press, 2007), 1-18; and Adeeb Khalid, The Sonu Shamdasani, Adeeb Khalid, Roger Smith, Irina Si- Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central rotkina, Sarah Marks and many other colleagues and Asia (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of friends for their continuous encouragement and support. California Press, 1998), xiii-xvi. 2 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 other materials may or may not reveal. The im- locally since the late 1980s when the Soviet gov- plications of this discussion are clear: despite the ernment resolved to re-introduce the pressing presence of numerous perspectives on the drug topic of narcotics into public discourse. ‘problem’ in the Soviet Union, even the basic con- tours of the history of drugs in Central Asia still The above outline reflects a historical perspective remain murky. On the other hand, by uncovering carefully constructed by the ruling regime, in how leading Soviet psychiatrists and narcologists which answers to questions such as “what to say,” served as KGB agents and collaborators, this pa- “how to say” and “when to say” were pre- per points to the disturbing subordination of the determined by the political agenda. More im- Soviet medical profession to the security appa- portantly, it represents a major myth that con- ratus, and the development of an unholy alliance sists of numerous fabrications on each of its lev- between the two, under close supervision of the els and conceals a vast amount of detail and com- Communist Party. This symbiosis emerges as one plexities, which have rarely been discussed but of the most significant crosscutting issues in So- were always part of the story. viet medical history, reaching far beyond the nar- row limits of psychiatry and its drug treatment Early Soviet Accounts of Drug Use in Central sub-specialty.3 Asia

Leonid Antsyferov was perhaps the first and most I. DRUGS AND DRUG HISTORIES IN SOVIET widely cited author, who wrote the initial histori- SOUTHERN PERIPHERIES cal accounts of hashish and opium use in Soviet Central Asia in the 1920s -1930s.4 Born in Tash- For many commentators on Soviet Central Asia, kent in 1891, Antsyferov received his medical narcotic drugs emerged in three different mani- education in the Russian city of Tomsk and festations. Drugs were often presented as ‘an evil worked for some time in a local clinic for nervous attribute of the backward Tsarist and feudal past’, diseases before returning to his native city. In which the Bolsheviks inherited after the 1917 Tashkent, his professional psychiatric career path Revolution and ‘defeated’ soon thereafter. For began two years prior to the Bolshevik revolu- decades, drugs were branded as a ‘birthmark’ of tion, and by 1921 he had reached the position of capitalist society, until the Gorbachev-initiated the chief doctor of the republican psychiatric reforms shocked society by revealing the widely hospital, where he stayed until his death in 1934.5 spreading drug addiction – narkomania – in the In his early publications and reports, Antsyferov USSR. This is also how, broadly speaking, Soviet only briefly touched upon narcotics use in Central drug history has been commonly delineated in Asia before and during the Russian colonization. both general and specialist literature published He called for a comprehensive struggle against drug addiction and ‘hashishism’ (‘gashishizm’) in particular, linking narkomania with the degenera- 3 For an excellent discussion of how Soviet “expert sur- geons and physicians, “under the full control of the NKVD/NKGB” falsified their conclusions to assist their masters in concealing a Soviet atrocity” of the Katyn 4 The only Soviet work published locally before massacre and the “complicity of doctors and scientists in Antsyferov’s ones that I am aware of was based on one the medical administration” in erasing state-induced post- medical case history related to drug addiction and homo- WWII Soviet famine of 1946-1947 from the public rec- sexuality and was written by Professor Preobrazhensky ord, see Marina Sorokina, “Between Power and Experts– from the Psychiatric Clinic of the Medical Department of Soviet Doctors Examine Katyn;” Veniamin Zima, “Medi- the Turkestan State University. See S. A. Preobrazhensky, cal Expertise and the 1946-47 Famine–The Identification “Kombinirovannyi Sluchai Gomoseksual’nosti s and Treatment of a State-Induced Illness;” and Frances Narkomaniei,” Turkestanskii Meditsinksii Zhurnal 1, no. Bernstein, Christopher Burton, and Dan Healey, “Intro- 3 (1922): 226-36. duction–Experts, Expertise, and New Histories of Soviet 5 M. I. Al’perovich, “Antsyferov L. V.,” in L. V. Medicine,” all three chapters in Frances Bernstein, Chris- Antsyferov and N. Kevorkov (eds), Trudy Respu- topher Burton, and Dan Healey (eds), Soviet Medicine: blikanskoi Psikhiatricheskoi Bol’nitsy, vol. I, (Tashkent: Culture, Practice, and Science, (DeKalb: Northern Illi- Izdanie Respublikanskoi Psikhiatricheskoi Bol’nitsy nois University Press, 2010), 3-26, 155-194. Narkomzdrava UzSSR, 1934), 7-10.

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 tion of indigenous population in Turkestan.6 As published as a supplement to the Sotsialistich- late as 1927, he reported to his fellow psychia- eskoe zdravookhranenie Uzbekistana journal and trists and neuro-pathologists, who gathered in was the most famous manuscript of Antsyferov. Moscow for the first All-Union Congress, that this In this, among many other things, he supplied a struggle was unsystematic and insufficient.7 number of opium and cannabis-containing reci- pes well known to the sedentary populations of Figure 1. Soviet Opium Money, Central Asia, 1919: Russian Turkestan, and made a far-reaching 250 Rubles Secured by Opium Stored at the State claim about the contribution of the so-called “red Bank in Semirech’e (Courtesy VLSPDST, Private teahouses” to a sharp decrease in the consump- Collection) tion of narcotic drugs in Soviet Central Asia by 1934.9 Yet, when citing Moravitsky as his source on drug recipes, Antsyferov provided neither the complete title of Moravitsky’s article, nor the de- tails of the periodical in which the article was published. In effect, the work of Kokand district physician Stepan Moravitsky, which is one of the most significant and informative sources on the use of narcotic drugs among sedentary popula- tions in the Ferghana region of the Turkestan General Governorship, has remained virtually unknown to Soviet and post-Soviet authors.10

Izdanie Respublikanskoi Psikhiatricheskoi Bol’nitsy Narkomzdrava UzSSR, 1934), 11-6. Antsyferov, howev- However, Antsyferov’s two most significant er, was not the first and the only author to describe the works, “Issues in Psychiatry in Central Asia” and injecting use of “sukhta” as he has borrowed from a far Hashishism in Central Asia, were both published more detailed account of A. N. Kondratchenko, “Obsle- shortly after his death, in 1934. While the former dovanie Gruppy Opiomanov,” Vrachebnaia Gazeta, no. mainly dealt with the history and contemporary 17-18, September 15-30, 1930. On the use of “sukhta” among Russian people in Turkmenistan see B. L. state of psychiatric care, it was also one of the few Smirnov, “K Probleme Terapii Reaktsii Abstinentsii u sources offering a detailed description of inject- Opiomanov,” in R. Ia. Malykin (ed.), Trudy Turk- ing use of an opiate called sukhta, which seems to menskogo Gosudarstvennogo Nauchno- had been practiced primarily by the non-native Issledovatel’skogo Instituta Nevrologii i Fiziatrii, vol. I, European drug users in some Central Asian set- (Ashkhabad and Baku: Turkmengosizdat, 1936), 143-54. tings in the 1920s and 1930s, and maybe even Further supporting evidence on the use of “sukhta” is before the Soviet rule.8 The latter text had been available in Boyish, “Shira Khāna,” Er Uzi 1 (1925): 4-5. 9 L. V. Antsyferov, Gashishizm v Srednei Azii (Tahskent: Prilozhenie k Zhurnalu Za Sotsialisticheskoe Zdra- 6 L. V. Antsyferov, “Gashishism v Turkestane i Psikhozy vookhranenie Uzbekistana 8-9, 1934), 10-1. v Sviazi s Nim,” Turkestanskii Meditsinskii Zhurnal 2, no. 10 S. Moravitsky, “O Narkoticheskikh i Nekotorykh Dru- 10-12 (1923): 305-8; P. Sitkovskii and P. Tsarenko, gikh Iadovitykh Veschestvakh, Upotrebliaemykh Nasele- “Nauchnye S’ezdy i Obshchestva,” Turkestanskii Med- niem Ferganskoi Oblasti,” in Trudy Obshchestva itsinskii Zhurnal 2, no. 3-6 (1923): 214-5. Estestvoispytatelei pri Imperatorskom Kazanskom Uni- 7 L. V. Antsyferov, “Gashishism (Nashism) v Turke- versitete 15, no. 2 (1885), 1-27. One Soviet author who stane,” in V. A. Beliaev, A. I. Miskinov, L. A. Prozorov, mentions Moravitsky is A. K. Streliukhin, “Klinika Os- L. M. Rozenshtein, and V. K. Khoroshko (eds), Trudy trogo i Khronicheskogo Otravleniia Gashishem” (Disser- Pervogo Vsesoiuznogo S’ezda Nevropatologov i tatsiia na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni doktora meditsinskikh Psikhiatrov (Moskva, s 18 po 23 dekabria 1927), (Mos- nauk, Turkmenskii Gosudarstevennyi Meditsinskii Insti- cow: Gosudarstvennoe Meditsinskoe Izdatel’stvo, 1929), tut, 1942), 14, 23. In a later publication, however, Streli- 40-1. ukhin misspells Moravitsky’s name as Morovedky. In the 8 L. V. Antsyferov, “Voprosy Psikhiatrii v Srednei Azii,” British Natural History Museum, where a copy of Mo- in L. V. Antsyferov and N. Kevorkov (eds), Trudy Respu- ravitsky’s text is held, the manuscript is incorrectly cata- blikanskoi Psikhiatricheskoi Bol’nitsy, vol. I, (Tashkent: logued as written in Czech language. 4 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

Antsyferov’s claim concerning a pivotal role of occupied a dominant position. Apart from a large red teahouses in tackling drug use in Central Asia number of publications written by health profes- needs to be seen in the context of numerous con- sionals, several important works were published temporary publications by other authors, which in the 1920s on the history of legal cultivation of came out in Russia and elsewhere in Soviet Union opium poppy in Central Asia.11 However, by the in the 1920s and early 1930s, and where the em- mid-1930s, publications on narcotic drugs, drug phasis was placed on drug prevention through addiction and drug treatment services began to “cultural and sanitary enlightenment.” By 1934, disappear from the central, Russian press.12 Antsyferov (or his unknown censors) felt under considerable political pressure to celebrate the Several key developments took place around that accomplishments of the Soviet government with time. Already in January 1934, at the Seventeenth regard to improving the everyday life of the peo- Party Congress, Stalin thought the time had come ple and doing away with all the ‘social’ ills such as for him to declare that the Soviet Union “became, bytovaia (habitual, life-style) narkomania in Cen- or more correctly, was becoming a literate and tral Asia. However, red teahouses hardly both- cultural country.”13 ered about the prevention of narcotics use and, rather, functioned as commercial socio- gastronomic institutions for the native men. 11 E. V. Rakovsky, “Opiinaia Promyshlennost’ v Turke- Figure 2. Leonid Vasil’evich Antsyferov, 1891- stane,” in G. S. Ogolevets and B. N. Saltykov (eds), Le- 1934 (Trudy Respublikanskoi psikhiatri-cheskoi karstvennye i Tekhnicheskie Rasteniia SSSR. Trudy bol’nitsy, vol. 1, 1934) Pervogo Vsesoiuznogo Soveshchaniia po Lekarstvennym i Tekhnicheskim Rasteniiam i Lekarstvennomy Syr’iu, (Moscow: Izdanie Organizatsionnogo Biuro Soveshchani- ia, 1926), 487-93; P. I. Shebalin, Opii. Ego Obrabotka i Dobyvanie v Dzhetysu (v Semirech’i) i v Kirgizstane (Rzhev: Izdanie Dzhetysuiskogo Gubplankoma i Dzhety- suiskogo Otdela Gosudarstvennogo Geograficheskogo Obschestva, 1927); and N. A. Bazilevskaia, “Semire- chenskie Rasy Opiinogo Maka i Vopros o Proiskhozhde- nii ego Kul’tury,” Biulleten’ Prikladnoi Botaniki, Genetiki i Rastenievodstva 19, pt. 2 (1928): 95-184. Some of the later publications on legal cultivation of opi- um poppy in Kyrgyzstan are K. K. Azykov, Ekonomika Proizvodstva Opiinogo Maka v Kirgizii (Frunze: Kir- gizskoe Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1960); M. F. Shuteev, F. G. Nosovets, Opyt Vozdelyvaniia Opiinogo Maka (Frunze: Kirgizskoe Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1961); V. A. Shevelev, A. I. Bankovsky, and V. I. Mura- viova, “Mechanical Drying of Raw Opium,” Bulletin on Narcotics 10, no. 2 (1958): 6-7; G. Shul’gin, “Cultivation of the Opium Poppy and the Oil Poppy in the Soviet Un- ion,” Bulletin on Narcotics 21, no. 4 (1969): 1-8. 12 Among the few texts which were published in Russia in the mid-1930s are A. M. Rapoport (ed.), Problemy Narkologii (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Meditsinskoe Izdatel’stvo, 1934); V. A. Bakhtiiarov, “K Voprosu o Narkomanii,” in K. A. Konovalov (ed.), Trudy Nauchno-Issledovatel’skikh Institutov Sverdlovskogo Oblzdravotdela, vol. VII, (Sverdlovsk: Sverdlovskoe Ob- lastnoe Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1936), 199-204; Overall, the period between the 1920s and early and N. V. Kantorovich, “Dispansernye Nabliudeniia nad 1930s was marked by an unprecedented plethora Morfinistami,” Sovetskaia Psikhonevrologiia 12, no. 3 of literature on narcotic drugs across various So- (1936): 69-75. viet cities, in which texts written by physicians 13 I. V. Stalin, Sochineniia, vol. XIII (Moscow: Gosudar- stvennoe Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Literatury, 1951), 306.

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In 1936, the new Constitution was adopted at the decrease from six percent in 1933 down to few Eighth Congress of Soviets, inaugurating “the new isolated cases in 1935. In his own words, this phase of the victory of the socialist system.”14 dramatic fall, which effectively took place over With such ‘grandiose’ achievements there would the year 1934, could be explained only by “sani- no longer be a place in the Soviet society for sur- tary and enlightenment activities, conditions of viving traces of ‘”backwardness, darkness, igno- the new byt [everyday life] in kolkhozes, and rance” nor any other vestiges of the Tsarist past kul’turnost’ [cultural interests and cultured be- that the Bolsheviks associated with illness and havior] of kolkhoz workers.”16 Removing the sub- disease. Often viewed as a ‘social’ issue connected ject of drugs and drug abuse in the USSR from the to the conditions of everyday life, drug addiction public discourse though, did not terminate drug was naturally expected to have vanished from the use among the state’s citizens. life of Soviet citizens once all its ‘social’ roots were supposedly eliminated (throughout the As my research on the ‘opium war’ in early Soviet 1930s, Central Asian psychiatrists commonly Badakhshan as well as other available literature used the terms ‘social’ and ‘bytovaia’ when refer- suggests, in some regions where opiate use was ring to drug addiction among the local popula- particularly pronounced this discrepancy was tion). In 1936, the Communist Party also sent a ‘addressed’ during Stalin’s Great Terror by the clear signal to psychiatrists, who had earlier ri- repression of drug users.17 Such measures also valed social hygienists for authority over the bytovoi alcoholic, to stay away from “claiming special expertise in detecting and treating social 16 problems.”15 G. K. Fetisov, “K Voprosu ob Anashakurenii,” Za Sot- sialisticheskoe Zdravookhranenie Uzbekistana 11-12 (1937): 102-3. An article published in Sotsialisticheskoe zdra- While it is clear that Fetisov’s figures and explanations vookhranenie Uzbekistana at the end of 1937 and were politically determined, one also needs to remember devoted to the “issue of smoking of hashish” was, that the Soviet prohibition on the cultivation of Indian perhaps, a good reflection of how these major hemp and opium poppy for non-medical and non- political changes could be related to drug politics. scientific purposes came into force since the beginning of The author of this article, G.K. Fetisov, discussed 1935. Although there was plenty of wild-growing canna- the prevalence of hashish smoking among the bis and, at the same time, illegal cultivation and trade in conscripts in Ferghana oblast and reported on its narcotic drugs continued to take place in the region after the introduction of prohibition. There is a need for further evidence on whether or not this prohibition could have 14 Tikhon Iudin, Ocherki Istorii Otechestvennoi had any immediate impact on price, availability and con- Psikhiatrii (Moscow: Medgiz, 1951), 385. sumption of hashish in Fergana. For more information, 15 Benjamin Zajicek, “Scientific Psychiatry in Stalin’s see “O Zapreshchenii Posevov Opiinogo Maka i Indiiskoi Soviet Union: The Politics of Modern Medicine and the Konopli,” Sobranie Zakonov i Rasporiazhenii Raboche- Struggle to Define ‘Pavlovian’ Psychiatry, 1939-1953” Krest’ianskogo Pravitel’stva Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialis- (PhD dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2009), 3-5. ticheskikh Respublik 56 (November 11, 1934): 818. Not long before that, Soviet social hygienists’ research on 17 Alisher Latypov, The Administration of Addiction: The alcoholism began to decline in the late 1920s and was Politics of Medicine and Opiate Use in Soviet Tajikistan, discontinued and left to psychiatrists by 1930. See Susan 1924-1958 (PhD dissertation, University College London, Gross Solomon, “David and Goliath in Soviet Public 2011), 253-86. Salmaan Keshavjee, Medicines and Tran- Health: The Rivalry of Social Hygienists and Psychiatrists sitions: The Political Economy of Health and Social for Authority over the Bytovoi Alcoholic,” Soviet Studies Change in Post-Soviet Badakhshan, Tajikistan (PhD dis- 41, no. 2 (1989): 254-75. sertation, Harvard University, 1998), 371-2. It is also worth noting that around that time (1937) the For research on repression of drug users and opium den Soviet Government declared that there were no more beg- owners in the Soviet Far East, see S. A. Golovin, gars and tramps among the adult population of the Soviet “Polozhenie Kitaiskogo Naseleniia na Dal’nem Vostoke Union. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Parazity Obschestva: Kak Rossii v 60-e gg. XIX v. – 30-e gg. XX v.,” and P. P. Brodiagi, Molodye Bezdel’niki i Chastnye Predprinimate- Khudiakov, “Iz Istorii Bor’by s Narkomaniei na Dal’nem li Meshali Kommunizmu v SSSR,” in E. R. Iarskaia- Vostoke v Nachale 20-kh gg.,” in D. P. Bolotin et al. Smirnova and P. V. Romanov (ed.), Sovetskaia Sotsi- (eds), Rossiia i Kitai na Dal’nevostochnykh Rubezhakh, al’naia Politika: Stseny i Deistvyiuschie Litsa, 1940-1958, vol. II, (Blagoveschensk: Izdatel’stvo Amurskogo (Moscow: OOO “Variant,” TsSPGI, 2008), 222. Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 2001), 40-3, 424-30. 6 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 ensured that the majority of people who contin- 1930s, public health professionals began to re- ued to use narcotic drugs after the years of terror write their drug histories and celebrate the ab- were driven underground and avoided any con- sence of narkomania in the Soviet Union. Mean- tact with drug treatment institutions. while the director of the Psychiatric Clinic of the Turkmen Medical Institute, Professor E.V. Maslov, Drug Histories after the Great Terror had to acknowledge in his article published in 1939 that as a “social evil,” “opiomania was still of Of all Soviet republics, Turkmenistan had the some significance for Turkmenia,” he further as- highest prevalence of opium use.18 The extent of serted that, in sharp contrast to the capitalist the drug use was significant enough to prevent countries, “cocaine addiction has disappeared, many authors writing for the public domain from morphine addiction has become rare, and alco- completely denying its existence in Turkmeni- holism has considerably declined” in the Soviet stan, not only in the late 1930s, but also in the Union following the October Revolution.20 One post-Stalin period.19 However, by the close of the year later, the author of a Soviet textbook on drug addiction, Ivan Strel’chuk, announced “a nearly complete liquidation of narkomania in the 21 In Moscow, where repressive measures were particularly USSR.” For more than four subsequent decades, focused on ‘dens’ (pritony) and their ‘vicious inhabitants’, this ‘nearly complete liquidation’ of drug addic- the prevalence of drug use has decreased, according to tion was paralleled by an almost complete ab- one source, “only from the mid-1930s”, down from 90 sence of open-access literature on the actual situ- cases per 10 000 people in 1932 to 9 cases per 10 000 ation with drugs and drug abuse in the Soviet Un- people in 1940. See Boris Kalachev, “Narkomafia s “Bo- ion. rodoi”: Kogda Poiavilas’ u Nas “Chuma XX veka”?,” Rodina 8 (1990): 28. 18 There are many archival documents and restricted ac- In the 1940s and 1950, psychiatrists based at cess publications in support of this statement. One of the Central Asian medical institutions wrote at least publicly available periodical publications on this theme is N. B. Kerimi and L. S. Ladygina, “Dinamika Zabolevae- mosti i Boleznennosti Opiinoi Narkomaniei v Turkmeni- Among those texts that appeared in the 1960s - early stane v 1959-1988 gg.,” Voprosy Narkologii 2 (1991): 25- 1980s in public domain and were devoted to the subject of 8. narcotic drugs in Turkmenistan are the following ones: 19 Some of the publications on drug addiction in the Pirkuli Khallyev, “Materialy k Razrabotke Klassifikatsii Turkmen SSR published in the late 1930s are Smirnov, Opiomanii (Ter’iakeshestva),” in Materialy Nauchnoi “K Probleme Terapii Reaktsii Abstinentsii u Opioma- Konferentsii Psikhiatrov Respublik Srednei Azii i Kazakh- nov,” 143-54; A. K. Streliukhin, “Obshchaia Simpto- stana. Tezisy i Avtoreferaty, 24-27 maia 1961g (Frunze, matologiia Ostrogo Gashishnogo Otravleniia,” in R. Ia. 1961), 42-3; V. V. Borinevich, “Nekotorye Voprosy Klin- Malykin (ed.), Trudy Turkmenskogo Gosudarstvennogo iki, Patogeneza i Lecheniia Opiinykh Narkomanii” Nauchno-Issledovatel’skogo Instituta Nevrologii i (Avtoreferat Dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni Fiziatrii, vol. I, (Ashkhabad and Baku: Turkmengosizdat, kandidata meditsinskikh nauk, 1-yi Moskovskii Ordena 1936), 155-63; V. V. Lastovetskii, “K Voprosu ob Os- Lenina Meditsinskii Institut imeni I. M. Sechenova, trykh Intoksikatsionnykh Psikhozakh (Gashishism),” in 1961); A. N. Shogam, “O Skrytom Ter’iakeshestve,” A. V. Parabuchev, N. A. Kevdin, R. Ia. Malykin, V. V. Zdravookhranenie Turkmenistana 8 (1965): 15-7; A. Suknev, and V. A. Dzikovsky (eds), Trudy Turkmenskogo Shikhmuradov, “Nekotorye Nabliudeniia pri Khronich- Gosudarstvennogo Meditsinskogo Instituta, vol. I, no. 1, eskoi Narkomanii,” Zdravookhranenie Turkmenistana 7 (Ashkhabad and Baku: Turkmengosizdat, 1937), 191-5; (1976): 33-35; A. Nokhurov, T. Kim, A. Orazov, T. A. K. Streliukhin, “K Voprosy o Psikhozakh na Pochve Gulmuradov, and D. Annagel’dyev, “Vliianie Opiuma na Khronicheskogo Gashishizma,” in A. V. Parabuchev, N. Polovye Funktsii Muzhchin,” Zdravookhranenie Turk- A. Kevdin, R. Ia. Malykin, V. V. Suknev, and V. A. menistana 6 (1981): 27-9; see also footnote 38 below. Dzikovsky (eds), Trudy Turkmenskogo Gosudarstven- 20 E. V. Maslov, “Problema Narkomanii v Turkmenskoi nogo Meditsinskogo Instituta, vol. I, no. 1, (Ashkhabad SSR,” 121-2. and Baku: Turkmengosizdat, 1937), 197-203; A. K. Stre- 21 I. V. Strel’chuk, Klinika i Terapiia Narkomanii (Mos- liukhin, “Osobennosti Techeniia Opiomanii u Beremen- cow: Moskovskii Oblastnoi Klinicheskii Institut i Mos- nykh,” Sovetskoe Zdravookhranenie Turkmenii 1 (1939): kovskaia Oblastnaia Nevro-Psikhiatricheskaia Klinika, 145-55; E. V. Maslov, “Problema Narkomanii v Turk- 1940), 146. In 1949 and 1956, Strel’chuk published se- menskoi SSR,” Sovetskoe Zdravookhranenie Turkmenii 2- cond and third editions of his textbook under the title of 3 (1939): 121-27. Klinika i Lechenie Narkomanii.

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 three drug histories. The first one was part of A.K. ten in 1949 by the chief doctor of the Tashkent- Streliukhin’s doctoral dissertation, which he based Republican Psychiatric Clinical Hospital, completed at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Turk- M.G. Guliamov, who discussed the history of psy- men State Medical Institute in 1942. Readily de- chiatric care in Uzbekistan and mentioned alco- scribing various anti-drug measures taken by holism as the only addiction of concern to the Central Asian rulers before the Russian coloniza- hospital between 1930 and 1934.24 tion and referring to archival documents and oral histories collected from “elderly men – residents While in the following years some doctors made of Kokand,” Streliukhin then echoed Strel’chuk proud declarations on the entire absence of drug and declared that cannabis addiction (gashish- addiction in Central Asia, there were other im- emania) had almost disappeared in Central Asia portant perspectives in the drug-related publica- (where in 1880, on the authority of Levitov and tions written by Soviet authors before the period Antsyferov, he asserted that four natives out of of glasnost’.25 To be sure, leading Soviet drug every hundred were allegedly addicted to hash- treatment specialist and the Chairman of the ish) since the October Revolution. In support of Standing Committee on the Control of Narcotics this statement, Streliukhin lamented that in 1940, of the Ministry of Health of the USSR, Eduard Ba- for his own clinical trials, he could not find a sin- baian, constantly felt the need to stress that “dur- gle person addicted to hashish alone in the entire city of Ashkhabad, which forced him to use his 1950), 321-9; In this volume, Streliukhin published two students and junior co-workers as research sub- other papers on narcotic drugs. The first one, “Uglevodnyi jects, to whom he administered cannabis. Obmen u Opiomanov,” was based on his work in Turk- menistan in the 1930s, while the second one, “Klinika Moreover, for Streliukhin all the drug recipes de- Ostroi Intoksikatsii Gashishem,” was part of his doctoral research conducted in 1940. scribed by Moravitsky in 1885 seemed to have 24 M. G. Guliamov, “K Istorii Psikhiatricheskoi Pomosh- “turned into tales” (ushli v oblast’ predaniia) by as chi v UzSSR,” in F. F. Detengof and M. G. Guliamov early as 1929, since he had not come across them (eds), Trudy Respublikanskoi Psikhiatricheskoi Klinich- even in “the very heart of the Ferghana valley” eskoi Bol’nitsy, vol. II, (Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo Akademii including the cities of Kokand, Namangan and Nauk UzSSR, 1949), 6-17. The author of this paper, who Andijan.22 In 1944, Streliukhin moved temporari- was the chief doctor of the Uzbek Republican Psychiatric ly to Tajikistan to become the Chair of Depart- Hospital and the distinguished physician of the Uzbek ment of Psychiatry at Stalinabad State Medical SSR, should not be confused with another leading Central Asian psychiatrist, M. G. Guliamov, who was only twenty Institute (the name of the capital city was years old at the time of publication of the above volume changed to Dushanbe in 1961). There, in 1950, he and by 1960 became the main figure in the Tajik mental published his “Brief Historical Overview of Drug health care services and education. On these two authors, Addictions,” which effectively became the first see Materialy Nauchnoi Konferentsii Psikhiatrov Respu- medical drug history published in Tajikistan dur- blik Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana. Tezisy i Avtoreferaty, 24- ing the Soviet period. 27 maia 1961g (Frunze, 1961). However, the same volume, where Guliamov’s article on In that article, Streliukhin repeated his claim on the history of psychiatric care in Uzbekistan was pub- gashishemania fading away in Soviet Central Asia lished, contained a paper on treating drug addicts with nicotinic acid authored by Iu. Blinovsky. This paper pro- that he had made eight years earlier. When ad- vided three brief descriptions of patient case histories, of dressing the history of opium addiction, he con- which two were undated and one dated back to 1940. Bli- cluded that “it has done its time” (otzhila svoi vek) novsky also referred to drug addiction among Soviet in Central Asia.23 Finally, the third work was writ- WWII veterans. See Iu. A. Blinovsky, “K Voprosy o Lechenii Narkomanov Nikotinovoi Kislotoi i Oblegchenii Abstinentsii,” in F. F. Detengof and M. G. Guliamov 22 A.K. Streliukhin, “Klinika Ostrogo i Khronicheskogo (eds), Trudy Respublikanskoi Psikhiatricheskoi Klinich- Otravleniia Gashishem,” 12-5, 23. eskoi Bol’nitsy, vol. II, (Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo Akademii 23 A. K. Streliukhin, “Kratkii Istoricheskii Obzor Narko- Nauk UzSSR, 1949), 228-32. manii,” in Sbornik Trudov Stalinabadskogo Gosudar- 25 On the absence of drug addiction in Uzbekistan see, for stvennogo Meditsinskogo Instituta, A. K. Streliukhin, S. example, M. G. Guliamov, “Mezhrespublikanskaia Kon- L. Barkagan, S. F. Shirokov, and Z. S. Barkagan (eds), ferentsiia Psikhiatrov,” Za Sotsialisticheskoe Zdra- vol. V, (Stalinabad: Stalinabad State Medical Institute, vookhranenie Uzbekistana 1 (1953): 45-8. 8 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 ing the very first years following the October authorities to admit ‘isolated cases’ of drug addic- Revolution the custom of drug use (bytovoe potre- tion in the Soviet Union, rather than a censorship blenie narkotikov) [emphasis added] was com- oversight, may well explain occasional publica- pletely eradicated.”26 Like their early Soviet col- tions in the open access literature, which con- leagues, he and other authors also readily re- tained both implicit and explicit evidence in sup- ferred to the widespread drug use in Western port of the existence of narkomania in the USSR countries and pointed to different social and eco- and specifically related to substance abuse in the nomic conditions in the USSR, which reportedly 1950s-1970s.30 served to protect its population from narkoma- nia.27 However, Soviet authorities often cautious- After the Soviet government began to establish ly avoided a flat denial of drug addiction in the the so-called labor and treatment reformatories country, understanding the ridiculousness of (lechebno-trudovye profilaktorii, LTPs) for alco- such claims and rather saying that cases of holics and drug addicts in the mid-1960s and cre- narkomania were “relatively rare,” that “it has ated an independent narcological service in 1975, long ceased to be a problem,” or that “addicts publications on the subject of “narcology” became mainly consist of chronically ill or seriously disa- very common.31 However, until the years of glas- bled persons who have taken narcotic drugs, such as morphine and codeine on account of their pri- conducted in other parts of the world. See Mary Schaeffer mary illness.”28 In 1984, two years before the Conroy, “Abuse of Drugs other than Alcohol and Tobac- wider recognition of large-scale drug abuse in the co in the Soviet Union,” Soviet Studies 42, no. 3 (1990): USSR, Babaian publicly provided a false union- 470, and endnotes 190 and 196; I. A. Sytinsky, L. V. wide figure of 2,500 drug addicts “who had been Galebskaia, and P. A. Konstantinov, “Fiziologo- registered in recent years.”29 This willingness of Biokhimicheskoe Obosnovanie Igloelektroterapii Le- karstvennoi Zavisimosti,” Uspekhi Fiziologicheskikh Nauk 11, no. 4 (1980): 68-87. 26 E. A. Babaian, “Control of Narcotic Substances and 30 Iu. T. Dusmukhamedova, “K Voprosu o Lechenii Prevention of Addiction in the USSR,” Bulletin on Nar- Narkomanov v Period Abstinentsii,” A. M. Sviadosch, cotics 31, no. 1 (1979): 13-22; “Narkomaniia – Sotsi- “Teizm (Chifirizm), kak Osobaia Forma Narkomanii,” S. al’noe Zlo,” Novoe Vremia 20 (1980): 30; Eduard Ba- P. Martinson, “Vliianie Kontsentrirovannykh Otvarov baian, “Razgovor s Chitatelem,” Novoe Vremia 22 Chaia (Chifira) na Bioelektricheskuiu Aktivnost’ Golov- (1984): 27. nogo Mozga,” N. V. Kantorovich, “O Profilaktike 27 In 1955, a leading Soviet journal of psychiatry and neu- Narkomanii,” all in Materialy Nauchnoi Konferentsii ropathology published an article on an uncommon subject Psikhiatrov Respublik Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana. Tezisy i more in line with the political agenda of the Soviet state, - Avtoreferaty, 24-27 maia 1961g (Frunze, 1961), 44-53; I. “drug addictions as one of the sources of excess profit for N. Piatnitskaia, “Klinika Kodeinomanii,” Zhurnal capitalism.” See A. N. Rubakin, “Narkomanii kak Odin iz Nevropatologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S. S. Korsakova 66, no. Istochnikov Sverkhpribyli Kapitalizma,” Zhurnal 5 (1966): 757-62; A. Ia. Ialovoi, “Rabota Meditsinskoi Nevropatologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S. S. Korsakova 55, no. Sestry Narkologicheskogo Kabineta,” Meditsinskaia 1 (1955): 58-65. Sestra 12 (1966): 33-4; P. E. Frolov, “Lechenie, Ukhod i 28 E. A. Babaian, “Narkologicheskaia Pomoshch na Sov- Nadzor za Bol’nymi Toksikomaniiami v Period Absti- remennom Etape,” Zhurnal Nevropatologii i Psikhiatrii nentsii,” Meditsinskaia Sestra 4 (1967): 10-2. A. A. imeni S. S. Korsakova 79, no. 8 (1979): 1113; M. G. Gu- Portnov (ed.), Profilaktika, Klinika, Lechenie Alkogolizma liamov, “Istoriia i Sovremennoe Sostoianie Bor’by s i Narkomanii, Organizatsiia Narkologicheskoi Pomosh- Narkomaniei v Tadzhikskoi SSR,” Zdravookhranenie chi. Trudy Moskovskogo Nauchno-Issledovatel’skogo Tadzhikistana 3 (1980): 87; Babaian, “Control of Narcotic Instituta Psikhiatrii MZ RSFSR, vol. 76 (Moscow, 1977): Substances and Prevention of Addiction in the USSR,” 289-343. 13. See also footnote 19 above, and Conroy, “Abuse of Drugs 29 Babaian, “Razgovor s Chitatelem,” 27. In this publica- other than Alcohol and Tobacco in the Soviet Union,” tion Babaian claimed that in the recent decades there was 470, and endnotes 190 and 191. not a single case of heroin use in the USSR. Historian 31 The first USSR LTP was established in Kazakhstan in Mary Schaeffer Conroy uses a study by Sytinsky et al. to 1964. In Tajikistan, the first LTP was opened in Septem- refute Babaian and Gonopol’sky’s (1987) claims on the ber 1965. E. A. Babaian and M. Kh. Gonopol’sky, absence of heroin addiction in the Soviet Union, but in Narkologiia (Moscow: Meditsina, 1987), 35; V. A. Kari- their review article Sytinsky et al. did not mention any ukhin, “Prinuditel’noe Lechenie Alkogolizma i Drugikh cases of heroin use and addiction in the USSR. Instead, Narkomanii v Lechebno-Trudovom Profilaktorii,” in M. they referred to heroin dependent patients from studies G. Guliamov (ed.), Materialy Vtoroi Konferentsii

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 nost’ narcological publications, when they were anniversary or a jubilee, they usually celebrated supposed to have no access restrictions, were the progress achieved and supported this by ref- overwhelmingly associated with alcoholism. In erence to the rising numbers of academic publica- Tajikistan, numerous narcology-related papers tions, hospitals, psycho-neurological and narco- and volumes were produced before the late logical dispensaries and units (kabinety) as well 1980s, which had promising titles with the “nar- as psychiatrists and narcologists to staff them.35 cology” keyword and yet containing hardly any- Rarely, and only very briefly, would they discuss thing on narkomania.32 As Nina Kerimi writes, in the quality of care in these institutions. Invaria- the 1960s-1970s “there were too many permis- bly, all these histories and reviews of the ‘state- sions to be obtained before starting research [on of-the-art’ in the republics would be written by narcotic drugs]. In some instances, the researcher the local most senior and authoritative figure in had to sign an undertaking not to divulge the re- the field. In Tajikistan, this person was Professor sults. All this shifted research to the clinical- Minkhodzh Guliamov, the Chief Psychiatrist for biological side where there were fewer re- the Ministry of Health in the Tajik SSR, the Chair strictions.”33 During that period, drug histories in of the Department of Psychiatry of the Tajik State Central Asia were subsumed under institutional Medical Institute, and the holder of many other histories of psychiatry and narcology, where ref- titles and posts. erences to narkomania were extremely scarce.34 Nevertheless, they did contain a considerable Such features were common to Soviet medical amount of factual information on the develop- historiography. Throughout the country, the his- ment of medical services. Often dedicated to an tory of medicine was a mandatory subject in the curriculum of medical institutes and universities, and yet it was not as important as clinical cours- Psikhiatrov Tadzhikistana, 19-20 sentiabria 1967g. Posviaschennoi 50-letiiu Sovetskoi Vlasti, (Dushanbe, es. In the Tajik Medical Institute, the history of 1967), 67-8. medicine was taught at the Department of Social 32 See, for example, G. V. Morozov and M. G. Guliamov Hygiene and Organization of Public Health and, as (eds), Aktual’nye Voprosy Sotsial’noi i Klinicheskoi was the case not only in the Soviet Union, was Narkologii. Materialy Ob’edinennoi Konferentsii written by and for doctors. The Chair of the De- Psikhiatrov Respublik Srednei Azii, Kazakhstana i Tsen- partment, a well-known Tajik physician and one- tral’nogo Ordena Trudovogo Krasnogo Znameni Instituta time Deputy Minister of Health of the Tajik SSR, Sudebnoi Psikhiatrii im. prof. V. P. Serbskogo, 5-7 oktia- Professor Yakub Tadzhiev, was in charge of writ- bria 1976g. (Dushanbe, 1976); M. G. Guliamov (ed.), ing the ‘grand’ histories of medicine in Tajikistan Aktual’nye Voprosy Narkologii. Tezisy Dokladov Vse- soiuznogo Simpoziuma Psikhiatrov, Dushanbe, 25-27 and textbooks of history of medicine, while his sentiabria 1984g. (Dushanbe, 1984); Zdravookhranenie junior colleagues usually wrote articles on ‘less Tadzhikistana 3 (1982), “Aktual’nye Voprosy significant’ topics devoted to certain institutions Narkologii” Section. or individual pioneers of biomedicine in Soviet 33 Nina Kerimi, “Opium Use in Turkmenistan: A Histori- Tajikistan, or to specific narrowly-demarcated cal Perspective,” Addiction 95, no. 9 (2000): 1325. areas of biomedicine. These histories celebrated 34 M. G. Guliamov and A. I. Subbotin, “Psikhiatricheskaia Pomoshch i Perspektivy ee Razvitiia v Tadzhikistane,” Zdravookhranenie Tadzhikistana 6 (1972): 54-61; M. G. 35 M. G. Guliamov (ed.), Materialy Vtoroi Konferentsii Guliamov and S. E. Umarov, “Istoriia, Sovremennoe Sos- Psikhiatrov Tadzhikistana, 19-20 sentiabria 1967g. toianie i Mery Uluchsheniia Prinuditel’nogo Lecheniia Posviaschennoi 50-letiiu Sovetskoi Vlasti (Dushanbe, Bol’nykh Khronicheskim Alkogolizmom,” Zdra- 1967); M. G. Guliamov (ed.), Aktual’nye Voprosy vookhranenie Tadzhikistana 1 (1973): 5-11; M. G. Gu- Psikhiatrii. Piataia Nauchnaia Konferentsiia Psikhiatrov liamov, “Narkologicheskaia Sluzhba i Sostoianie Nauch- Tadzhikistana, Posviashchennaia 40-letiiu Osnovaniia nykh Issledovanii po Probleme Alkogolizma v Tadzhik- Kafedry Psikhiatrii Tadzhikskogo Gosudarstvennogo skoi SSR,” Zdravookhranenie Tadzhikistana 4 (1979): Meditsinskogo Instituta im. Abuali ibn-Sino (Tezisy 13-7; M. G. Guliamov and N. Ia. Talesnik, “Istoriia i Sov- Dokladov), 4-6 iulia 1983g. (Dushanbe, 1983); M. G. remennoe Sostoianie Organizatsii Narkologicheskoi Guliamov and A. Ia. Levinson (eds), Voprosy Klinich- Pomoshchi,” Zdravookhranenie Tadzhikistana 5 (1983): eskoi Psikhiatrii. Sbornik Rabot Kafedry Psikhiatrii, vol. 6-7; M. G. Guliamov and A. I. Subbotin, “Razvitie LXI, no. 2 (Sbornik Posviashchaetsia Chetvertomy Psikhiatricheskoi Nauki i Praktiki,” Zdravookhranenie Vsesoiuznomy S’ezdu Nevropatologov i Psikhiatrov) Tadzhikistana 4 (1984): 17-23. (Dushanbe, 1963). 10 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 the achievements of the Soviet rule and of the So- Although doctors played an important role in ad- viet doctor-hero while keeping silent on or un- dressing drug use and writing drug histories, derstating the developments in Western coun- chekists and militia were the other two key stake- tries. When discussing Soviet achievements, ref- holders in charge of the ‘struggle’ against narcot- erences were often made to the rising figures of ics. Since the Communist Party guided the whole patient admissions (pointing exclusively, in the process of “constructing socialism” and “fighting authors’ views, to a greater trust of Tajik people for communism”, the Party and the law enforce- to biomedicine), the expanding network of health ment histories were, in fact, part of the literature care institutions, free health care services, and on drugs in Soviet Tajikistan. But as party-state- the increasing numbers of home-grown doctors generated histories, they all told a similar story: and nurses. Yet, the ‘qualitative’ side of the mat- drug use was rampant on the Tajik soil before the ter, the setbacks of Tajik biomedicine, remained Bolsheviks arrived and they defeated addiction largely unmentioned. Many of those medical his- with their tough measures. The main contradic- tories were written with the purpose of “re- tion in these histories, however, was their answer calling, with a good word, those who stood at the to the “when” question. The Tajik KGB history origins” of biomedicine in Tajikistan, commemo- mentions only pre-Soviet widespread smoking of rating an anniversary or paying tribute to the opium in the Pamirs and is silent on the response past.36 of chekists to it. The history of Tajik militia claims that it took only a few years to “essentially do away” with drug use in the Gorno-Badakhshan 36 While medical historiography has transformed very Autonomous Region. Finally, the “historical expe- little in Tajikistan (at least as far as the above perspectives rience” of the Communist Party suggested that are concerned) after the demise of the Soviet Union, situa- drug use in the Pamirs was reduced “gradually” tion in post-Soviet Russia began to change since the early 2000s. For the discussion of these changes in Russia see and “totally eliminated” only by the mid-1930s. A Jürgen Schlumbohm, Michael Hagner, and Irina Sirotki- multi-volume history of Soviet frontier troops, na, “Vvedenie. Istoriia Meditsiny: Aktual’nye Tendentsii i published as a collection of archival documents, Perspektivy,” in Jürgen Schlumbohm, Michael Hagner, did contain many records on drug smuggling and and Irina Sirotkina (eds), Bolezn’ i Zdorov’e: Novye Pod- use in Soviet Central Asia, yet it made sure to re- khody k Istorii Meditsiny, (St. Petersburg: Evropeiskii place any sensitive data with elision marks.37 Universitet v Sankt-Peterburge and ALETEIIA, 2008), 8- 40. However, Western Scholars have written several works For my research on the history of medicine in Tajikistan on the history of medicine in Central Asia, including two and pre-Soviet Central Asia, one of the many useful re- excellent studies by Paula Michaels and Cassandra Marie sources was a bibliographical index of published texts “on Cavanaugh. There is also an emerging interest among the history and contemporary state of medicine and public Russian historians to propose new ways of looking at the health in the Tajik SSR” (which also contains a section on Russian colonial (“or Not?”) biomedical project in Cen- “narkotizm”): V. A. Nevsky, Meditsina v Tadzhikistane. tral Asia. See Paula Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine Bibliograficheskii Ukazatel’ Literatury po Istorii i Sov- and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (Pittsburgh, PA: Uni- remennomy Sostoianiiu Meditsiny i Zdravookhraneniia v versity of Pittsburgh Press, 2003); Cassandra Marie Tadzhikskoi SSR, (Stalinabad: Ministerstvo Zdra- Cavanaugh, “Backwardness and Biology: Medicine and vookhraneniia Tadzhikskoi SSR, Gos. Nauchnaia Med- Power in Russian and Soviet Central Asia, 1868-1934,” itsinskaia Biblioteka, 1959); similar indices exist for texts (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2001); Jeff Sa- on the history of medicine in pre-revolutionary Central hadeo, “Epidemic and Empire: Ethnicity, Class and “Civi- Asia and Uzbekistan: see, for example, K. G. Shishova lization” in the 1892 Tashkent Cholera Riot,” Slavic Re- and A. N. Shavina, Ukazatel’ Otechestvennoi Literatury view 64, no. 1 (2005): 117-39; Anna Afanasyeva, po Zdravookhraneniiu Dorevoliutsionnogo Uzbekistana ““Osvobodit’…Ot Shaitanov i Sharlatanov:” Diskursy i (1868-1917) (Tashkent: Gosudarstvennoe Meditsinskoe Praktiki Rossiiskoi Meditsiny v Kazakhskoi Stepi v XIX Izdatel’stvo Ministerstva Sdravookhraneniia UzSSR, veke,” Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 113-50; Anna Afanasyeva, 1961) (there is also a volume covering the period up to “Russian Imperial Medicine: The Case of the Kazakh 1968); Kh. Khikmatullaev and S. Karimova (eds), So- Steppe,” in Anne Digby, Waltraud Ernst and Projit branie Vostochnykh Rukopisei Akademii Nauk Respubliki Muhkarji (eds), Crossing Colonial Historiographies: His- Uzbekistan: Meditsina (Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo Narodnogo tories of Colonial and Indigenous Medicines in Transna- Naslediia Imeni Abully Kadyri, 2000). tional Perspective, (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Pub- 37 See L. Blokhin, Chekisty Ognennykh Let (Iz Istorii Or- lishing, 2010), 57-75. ganov Gosbezopasnosti Tadzhikistana) (Dushanbe: Ifron,

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Thus, besides a small number of publications in erature usually served to raise the awareness of medical literature and official admissions of Soviet society on the ‘menace of narkomania’ by narkomania in a tiny pocket of chronically ill and the horrific picture of drug addicts whose lives seriously disabled patients, decrees of the Su- were consumed by the ‘white death.’ While some preme Councils of the USSR and individual Cen- of the glasnost’ era publications provided useful tral Asian republics, resolutions of the Supreme factual information, very few of them were de- Court Plenum as well as occasional articles in Sot- voted to drug use and drug regulations in the sialisticheskaya zakonnost’ – “organ of the USSR USSR in the past. On the rare occasions when this Prosecutor’s Office” – were perhaps the very few did happen, they often introduced or reinforced visible signs of existence of the ‘drug problem’ Soviet drug myths. More commonly, the authors from the 1960s till the mid 1980s.38 merely distanced themselves from denying the existence of narkomania in earlier decades by Texts on Drugs and Drug Addiction during the stating something similar to: “until recently, it Gorbachev Era was considered that there was no drug addiction in the USSR.” They then took great pains to show Finally, the subject of narcotic drugs in the USSR the ‘graveness’ of the contemporary drug situa- (in terms of recognition of widespread drug con- tion. sumption by Soviet citizens), and Central Asia in particular, re-emerged in public discourse in It was also during the years of glasnost’ and the 1986 following the Gorbachev-initiated reforms. changing political situation that the very first The last six years of the Soviet Union saw an im- publications on narcotic drugs in the USSR were mense number of ‘drug-related’ newspaper and written by Western scholars. They relied over- journal articles, books and brochures that were whelmingly on the analysis of the Russian- published in both the central and local press in language central press of the late 1980s – early Russian and other languages. This ephemeral lit- 1990s, which included some textual and numeric data related to the Central Asian republics, thus 1968), 34; Ia. S. Motylev, Dokumenty Svidetel’stvuiut: producing drug histories that were focused on Kratkii Ocherk Istorii Tadzhikskoi Militsii (Dushanbe: the same time span as their sources.39 However, Irfon, 1977), 33; M. N. Nazarshoev, Istoricheskii Opyt without access to a broad array of central and KPSS po Rukovodstvu Sotsialisticheskim Stroitel’stvom v local newspaper articles as well as having a lack Gorno-Badakhshanskoi Avtonomnoi Oblasti Tadzhikskoi of knowledge on drug use in Central Asia in the SSR (1917-1941 gg.) (Dushanbe: Donish, 1982), 101; M. past, they were sometimes unable to interpret Shergaziev, “Iz Istorii Bor’by Kommunisticheskoi Partii za Vostanovlenie i Razvitie Ekonomiki i Kul’tury GBAO their findings correctly. Kimberly Neuhauser, for (1920-1929gg.),” in A. A. Benediktov (ed.), Ocherki po Istorii Tadzhikistana, vol. II, (Stalinabad: Stalinabadskii 39 See, for example, John M. Kramer, “Drug Abuse in the Gosudarstvennyi Pedagogicheskii Institut im. T. T. Soviet Union,” Problems of Communism 37, no. 2 (1988): Shevchenko, 1959), 79; P. I. Zyrianov et al. (eds), Pogra- 28-40; John M. Kramer, “Drug Abuse in the USSR,” in nichnye Voiska SSSR, 1918-1928: Sbornik Dokumentov i Anthony Jones, Walter D. Connor, and David E. Powell Materialov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Nauka,” 1973); P. I. (eds), Soviet Social Problems, (Boulder, San Francisco Zyrianov et al. (eds), Pogranichnye Voiska SSSR, 1929- and Oxford: Westview Press, 1991), 94-118; René Ahl- 1938: Sbornik Dokumentov i Materialov (Moscow: Izda- berg, “Drogensucht und Kriminalität in der Sowjetunion,” tel’stvo “Nauka,” 1972); E. B. Tsybul’sky et al. (eds), Osteuropa 40, no. 4 (1990): 318-35; Rensselaer W. Lee Pogranichnye Voiska SSSR, 1939-iiun’1941: Sbornik III, “Soviet Narcotics Trade,” Transaction: Social Science Dokumentov i Materialov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Nau- and Modern Society 28, no. 5 (1991): 46-52; Kimberly C. ka,” 1970). Neuhauser, “The Market for Illegal Drugs in the Soviet 38 See, for example, A. Aimamedov, “Sudebnaia Praktika Union in the Late 1980s,” Berkeley-Duke Occasional Bor’by s Narkomaniei,” Sotsialisticheskaia Zakonnost’ 7 Papers on the Second Economy in the USSR, no. 23 (1962): 21-3. This article written by the chairman of the (Berkeley, University of California, 1990). Supreme Court of the Turkmen SSR is uniquely open, for One paper that was published in the English language an unclassified text written in 1962, about drug use and during the Brezhnev period mentioned narcotic drugs in drug trade in Central Asia and looks very much like a the USSR only very briefly, as far as anti-drug legislation glasnost’ era-publication despite being published twenty- was concerned: Davis E. Powell, “Drug Abuse in Com- four years before the recognition of the widespread nature munist Europe,” Problems of Communism 22, no. 4 of these phenomena. (1973): 31-40. 12 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 example, wrote that “[i]n regard to Tadzhikistan, the Soviet Union has, for a long while, remained the central press has been virtually silent on the unmatched in the amount of early Soviet medical issue of drug abuse in this republic, so the num- publications reviewed by any historian of narcot- ber of persons on the register may be more re- ic drugs in the USSR. All the same, it should main- flective of officials’ efforts to conceal or ignore the ly be judged as a literature review and even as problem than the actual level of drug use in the such it was still far from complete and focused republic.”40 However, there were at least nine almost entirely on the content of Soviet medical publications on drug use and drug trade in Tajiki- texts without any serious engagement with a stan in the central press between 1987 and 1990, larger historical context. 44 Feltham and and a significantly higher number of articles pub- Meiroyan’s paper was a result of a collaborative lished locally within the country.41 Similarly, John project between the University of Essex, the Len- Kramer, who did not seem to have access to ingrad State Institute of Post-Graduate Medical sources on the history of opium use among the Studies and the co-operative “Narkolog.” It was Turkmens in the nineteenth and early twentieth substantially informed by the authors’ exposure centuries, mistakenly suspected that “Turkmenia, to the experiences of drug users and is unique in with its disproportionately higher number of reg- terms of the insight it offers into the major chal- istered addicts than the national [USSR] average,” lenges and shortcomings facing the Soviet drug might be a good example of local officials seeking treatment services.45 “to demonstrate their zeal in the fight against drugs by inflating the number of registered ad- Furthermore, Soviet law and justice periodicals dicts in their republics.”42 such as Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, Sotsialis- ticheskaia zakonnost’, and Sovetskaia iustitsiya, Perhaps the only three exceptions to the tenden- served as platforms to discuss the legal aspects in cy to use the late Soviet periodicals as the main the struggle against narkomania. In 1988, Soviet source were articles by Mary Schaeffer Conroy, authorities also initiated the publication of Vo- which dealt primarily with the early Soviet publi- prosy narkologii journal.46 Devoted to the medical cations on narcotic drugs; articles by Rensselaer aspects of drug and alcohol addiction, this journal W. Lee III on the late Soviet drug market; and a often published articles submitted by authors paper co-authored by Ann Feltham, the British from various Soviet republics as well as occasion- sovietologist researching social issues, and Artak al studies of the prevalence of drug use based on Meiroyan, the Leningrad-based psychologist who previously classified statistical data.47 In summer was one of the two founders of the first Soviet Narcotics Anonymous Self-help Group “Rebirth.” 44 Four years later after publishing her paper, Conroy also Apart from studying published literature, Lee III published a book that contained a chapter on drug use and interviewed several key Soviet officials and re- abuse in Tsarist Russia. See Mary Schaeffer Conroy, In searchers and got access to their unpublished Health and Sickness: Pharmacy, Pharmacists, and the manuscripts as well as some of their previously Pharmaceutical Industry in Late Imperial, Early Soviet classified data.43 Conroy’s article on drug abuse in Russia (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994), 200- 18. 45 Ann Feltham and Artak Meiroyan, “Drug Abuse in the 40 Neuhauser, “The Market for Illegal Drugs in the Soviet Soviet Union,” Discussion Paper Series, no. 11 (Universi- Union in the Late 1980s,” 36. ty of Essex Russian and Soviet Studies Centre, 1991). 41 Argumenty i Fakty, August 26, 1986; Izvestiia, May 30, 46 Voprosy Narkologii was a well-known periodical that 1987; Komsomol’skaia Pravda, July 27, 1988; Sel’skaia was published in the late 1920s as volumes of collected Zhizn’, January 22, 1989; Stroitel’naia Gazeta, July 14, works. It came out irregularly and less frequently than on 1989; Rabochaia Tribuna, July 19, 1990; Pravda, July 28, annual basis. 1990; Sel’skaia Zhizn’, August 8, 1990; Pravda, August, 47 See, for example, I. G. Urakov, V. E. Pelipas, and L. D. 31, 1990. Miroshnichenko, “Dinamika Rasprostranennosti Narko- 42 Kramer, “Drug Abuse in the USSR,” 100. manii v SSSR,” Voprosy Narkologii 4 (1989): 50-5; 43 Rensselaer W. Lee III, “Dynamics of the Soviet Illicit Kerimi and Ladygina, “Dinamika Zabolevaemosti i Drug Market,” Crime, Law and Social Change 17, no. 3 Boleznennosti Opiinoi Narkomaniei v Turkmenistane v (1992): 177-233 (research for this study was completed 1959-1988 gg.”; N. B. Kerimi and L. S. Ladygina, “Epi- by its author before the demise of the USSR). demiologicheskie Kharakteristiki Opiinoi Narkomanii v

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1991, in an attempt to overcome the “extremely is often a tendency to dismiss that period out of low” effectiveness of the narcological service, hand.49 leading Soviet narcologists presented a new con- cept for the organization of narcological care in In Russia, where the government is currently ve- the USSR in the pages of this journal. The editori- hemently opposed to opioid substitution therapy al board published two comments on the new – a treatment option widely recognized as the concept in the same issue, including one submit- most effective for opioid dependency – mainte- ted by the head of the Kyrgyz republican narco- nance treatment was labeled as a ‘vicious prac- logical dispensary, and announced that it was go- tice’ during the Soviet era.50 Although there is a ing to publish further comments and feedback in considerable discrepancy between Soviet and the upcoming issues.48 However, a few months post-Soviet sources as to when this treatment later the Soviet Union ceased to exist. method was prohibited in the USSR, an in-depth study to explore the historical roots of this prohi- bition and to achieve a better understanding of II. EXAMINING SOURCES ON NARCOTICS FROM the Soviet and Russian resistance to substitution THE USSR therapy has yet to be undertaken.51

What are the strengths and limitations of sources 49 Aleksandr Zelichenko, Afganskaia Narkoekspansiia that have been mentioned so far? What might be 1990-kh gg., 2nd edition (Bishkek, 2004), 100. some of the alternative sources when studying 50 Babaian, “Razgovor s Chitatelem,” 27; Babaian and the history of narcotic drugs in the Soviet Union Gonopol’sky, Narkologiia, 40. 51 in general and Central Asia in particular? What See Richard Elovich and Ernest Drucker, “On Drug are the possibilities and pitfalls of using these Treatment and Social Control: Russian Narcology’s Great Leap Backwards,” Harm Reduction Journal 5, 23 (2008): materials? doi:10.1186/1477-7517-5-23; Tim Rhodes, Anya Sarang, Peter Vickerman, and Matthew Hickman, “Policy Re- Numerous medical publications on narcotic drugs sistance to Harm Reduction for Drug Users and Potential that were published in the USSR in the 1920s and Effect of Change, British Medical Journal 341 (2010): 1930s are fascinating and informative sources on c3439. a number of drug-related aspects, including, for In the environment of overwhelming opposition to substi- example, the profiles of users, the patterns of use, tution therapy in the Russian government, drug enforce- the drugs of choice, drug treatment organizations ment and narcology circles (on the connection between the Soviet KGB and top echelon public health officials and the provision as well as drug prevention see below), there is a striking lack of uniformity, both strategies promoted by the state authorities and within and between these groups, on the year of prohibi- professionals. They can be fruitfully examined to tion of what they often call “narcotic allowance” and understand how drug addiction was constructed “treating addiction to one drug with another.” Among and addressed as a medical and public health is- narcologists, two different dates have been proposed with sue. With rare exceptions, these sources have not a twenty years gap between them, – 1957 and 1977. In been used systematically to study the history of contrast to these claims, authors of the ‘historical aspect’ drugs in Central Asia and other Soviet regions. chapter in the Russian counternarcotics textbook falsely Instead, some authors suggested that the subject suggest that this might had happened back in 1923, when “treating narkomania with narcotics” was at last recog- of narcotic drugs had been classified since the nized as “erroneous” and unacceptable by one Russian early 1930s, whereas among non-historians there psychiatrist. See E. A. Babaian and V. M. Bulaev, “Farmakologicheskie Aspekty Lecheniia Narkomanii, Vyzyvaemykh Morfinopodobnymi Sredstvami (Obzor),” Zhurnal Nevropatologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S. S. Korsa- Gorodskoi i Sel’skoi Mestnostiakh Turkmenistana,” Vo- kova 89, no. 1 (1989): 136; V. N. Krasnov, N. N. Ivanets, prosy Narkologii 4 (1991): 34-6. T. B. Dmitrieva, A. S. Kononets, and A. S. Tiganov, 48 N. N. Ivanets, V. E. Pelipas, I. A. Nikiforova, M. G. Memorandum “Net Metadonovym Programmam v Rossi- Tsetlin, E. A. Koshkina, Iu. V. Valentik, L. D. Mirosh- iskoi Federatsii” (Primenenie Metadona Nel’zia nichenko, and D. M. Galabaeva, “Novaia Kontseptsiia Rassmatrivat’ kak Lechenie) (2005), available at: Organizatsii Narkologicheskoi Pomoschi v SSSR,” Vo- http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/ihrd/news/m prosy Narkologii 3 (1991): 2-6; “Ot Redaktsii,” Voprosy ethadone_2006/noto_russian_20060511.pdf (accessed Narkologii 3 (1991): 47. March 16, 2010); B. Kalachev, P. Sbirunov and A. Ser- 14 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

Yet, maintenance treatment was very common in treatment facilities and specialists were based in early Soviet territories. This also included heroin the capital cities of Tashkent and Ashkhabad, maintenance treatment, which was highly praised whereas the majority of patients in Tashkent rep- based on the findings of one study from Lenin- resented the non-native, European ethnic groups. grad as late as 1936, before drug addiction alleg- As a result, a perspective offered by the early So- edly became ‘almost entirely non-existent’.52 viet sources was usually (but not always) limited to the urban, mainly Russian-speaking popula- However, there are many issues to keep in mind tion. Thus, generalizations about drug use in Cen- about these sources as reflections on narkomania tral Asia based exclusively on such texts written during the first two decades of Soviet rule. by narcologists and psychiatrists would be rather Though Central Asian physicians authored a con- problematic. siderable number of texts in the early Soviet drug literature, none of these doctors belonged to the We may learn something about a small group of native populations. Written in Russian, these ‘narkomans’ who were treated in Soviet hospitals works primarily originated from Uzbekistan and and dispensaries, but the extent to which these Turkmenistan, the two republics that established people were different from drug users who did their first narcological facilities in the 1920s.53 not undergo biomedical treatment and did not Even within those two republics, both drug have any contact with the state may be signifi- cant. These sources also tell us almost nothing about drug treatment offered by indigenous prac- geev, “Razvitie Narkomanii i Nezakonnogo Oborota titioners, the tabibs and other healers, who were Narkotikov v Rossii i v Mire. Istoricheskii Aspect outlawed by the state in the 1920s but neverthe- Rasprostraneniia Narkotikov i Narkomanii v Rossii,” in less remained popular throughout Central Asia, A. N. Sergeev (ed.), Protivodeistvie Nezakonnomy Oboro- ty Narkoticheskikh Sredstv i Psikhtropnykh Veschestv: particularly in the early decades of Soviet rule. Uchebnoe Posobie, (Moscow: UBNON MVD Rossii, Nor do patients’ ‘voices’ occupy any sizeable Moskovskaia Akademiia MVD Rossii, Izdatel’stvo space in these materials, and when available, the “Schit-M,” 2000), 5-6. rare ‘revelations’ come from Russian-speaking, 52 Kantorovich, “Dispansernye Nabliudeniia nad better educated, urban drug users with access to Morfinistami,” 69-75; see also my recent paper Alisher health care.54 Latypov, “The Soviet Doctor and the Treatment of Drug Addiction: “A Difficult and Most Ungracious Task,” Moreover, one can notice that authors of the early Harm Reduction Journal 8, 32 (2011): doi:10.1186/1477- Soviet publications used biomedical vocabulary 7517-8-32. 53 Overall, the number of non-Russian language publica- and applied such key concepts as ‘addiction’, tions on narcotic drugs in Central Asia written locally ‘treatment’ and ‘prevention’ throughout their ar- after 1917 seems to be very small, and the works that I ticles to describe both the experiences of patients have come across are Boyish’s “Shira Khāna” and Prof. and those of their own. Yet, with nearly universal Fitrat, Qyamat. Hayaliy Hkaya (Tashkent: OzSSR Davlat illiteracy, the lack of knowledge of the Russian Nashriyati, 1935). The earlier version of this story was language and a very limited (if any) prior expo- published by Abdurrauf Fitrat in 1923. Some of the Rus- sure to biomedicine, these words and indeed, sian language editions of this work are Abdurauf Fitrat, their meanings in the context of the Soviet bio- Strashnyi Sud (Satiricheskii Rasskaz) (Dushanbe: Irfon, 1964) and Abdurrauf Fitrat, Den’ Strashnogo Suda. Ras- medical project were alien to most of the natives skaz-Satira (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoi Litera- of Central Asia. According to the early Soviet texts tury, 1965). The English language translation has been on drug addiction in Uzbekistan and Turkmeni- provided by Edward A. Allworth, Evading Reality: The stan, when hospitalized in narcological facilities Devices of Abdalrauf Fitrat, Modern Central Asian Re- native patients were usually short-spoken and formist (Leiden-Boston-Köln: BRILL, 2002), 78-102. Sadriddin Aini also refers to narcotic drugs on many oc- casions in his reminiscences, Sadriddin Aini, Ioddoshtho, 54 A. Blankfel’d, “Perezhivaniia Opiofaga vo Vremia vols. I-IV (Stalinobod: Nashriioti Davlatii Tojikiston, Iavlenii Vozderzhaniia,” in L. V. Antsyferov and N. 1954-1955), of which the most accurate and complete Kevorkov (eds), Trudy Respublikanskoi Psikhiatricheskoi Russian language translation seems to be Sadriddin Aini, Bol’nitsy, vol. I, (Tashkent: Izdanie Respublikanskoi Vospominaniia, trans. Anna Rozenfel’d (Moscow and Psikhiatricheskoi Bol’nitsy Narkomzdrava UzSSR, 1934), Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1960). 151-3.

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 kept silence even during the period of withdraw- some texts appeared as publications “for official als. As doctors had to rely on interpreters in or- use only” and were accessed only by limited der to collect ‘anamneses’ from native patients, number of insiders.58 Furthermore, when the pic- answers were often brief and some questions, ture of drug consumption and trade was present- such as the ones on the presence and nature of ed to the public through the Soviet press, law en- “opium-induced hallucinations” (galliutsinatsii vo forcement authorities were usually better in- vremia [opiinogo] op’ianeniia), were well beyond formed than the Ministry of Health, even on such the patients’ grasp.55 issues as the number of drug ‘users’ and ‘addicts’ formally registered and known to the state.59 And, As for the later periods, when the decades of de- of course, what was made public by the police nial were followed by the recognition of a signifi- and security services was nowhere near the cantly higher prevalence of drug use, we in turn ‘complete’ picture. need to acknowledge that the emergence of thou- sands of texts on the surface of public discourse It is also important to recognize that the glasnost’ during the period of glasnost’ did not always era-materials were part of the state’s campaign mean a major revision of the content. In particu- aiming, among other things, to educate the public lar, the arguments related to early Soviet Central on the ‘evils of drugs’ and to form a highly nega- Asia remained largely unchanged. For example, in tive attitude toward narkomania. With some ex- Tajikistan, Guliamov continued to ascribe the ceptions, authors of newspaper articles, which Bolsheviks’ success in their “struggle against were published during that time, often treated narkomania” to red teahouses.56 In Moscow, Ba- ‘drug addicts’ and ‘drug addiction’ equally. The baian and Gonopol’sky’s narcology textbook re- instructions of the Party were to publish more, sembled the histories of the 1940s and 1950s, as and “more openly.” When the editors of periodi- they claimed that habitual, life-style (bytovoe) cals, public health officials and the managers of drug use was entirely eliminated in Central Asia other state institutions were reporting to the Par- “in the very first years of Soviet rule.”57 ty on their activities against narkomania, it was usually the rising number of publications on the Another possible misperception about the glas- anti-narcotics theme that many were keen to nost’ era-sources is that as the ‘taboo’ on the top- highlight. As noted by Michael Levin, a Soviet so- ic of drugs was removed, the Soviet press was ciologist who worked for a journal in the late given the freedom to publish everything that was 1980s, available and related to drugs. The actual situa- tion was far more complex and, against the back- [v]ery few [Soviet journalists] had ever drop of much greater openness reflected in nu- before seen drugs or addicts, but some merous books, articles and documentaries, many heard or even read something, and possi- restrictions still remained in place. The public bly [had] even written, about how horri- disclosure of official statistics on drugs, for ex- ample, could not have always happened without 58 obtaining approval from the Party. As before, The Russian State Archive of Contemporary History both in Central Asia and in other Soviet regions (RGANI), f. 89, op. 11, d. 44, ll. 6, 7. Some of the ‘DSP’ publications produced in the late 1980s were, for instance, A. I. Durandina (ed.), Aktual’nye Voprosy Narkologii. 55 A. N. Kondratchenko and Kh. Ioffe, “Opyt 1 ½ - Sbornik Nauchnykh Trudov Kafedry Psikhiatrii, vol. 9 Godichnoi Raboty Narkostatsionara Tashkentskogo (Frunze: Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneniia Kirgizskoi SSR, Nevro-Psikhiatricheskogo Dispansera,” Zhurnal Kirgizskii Gosudarstvennyi Meditsinskii Institut, 1987); Nevropatologii i Psikhiatrii 6 (1931): 86; Smirnov, “K S. V. Gurchinas, I. A. Gechas, A. A. Dembinskas, E. P. Probleme Terapii Reaktsii Abstinentsii u Opiomanov,” Tsiunene, L. I. Bulotaite, and E. Iu. Subatavichus (eds), 143-5. Voprosy Narkologii. Sbornik Nauchnykh Trudov (Vilnius: 56 M. Guliamov, “Gashishnaia Narkomania,” Zdra- MOKSLAS, 1988). vookhranenie Tadzhikistana 2 (1988): 37; M. Ġ. Ġulo- 59 Both the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Health mov, S. Sh. Sharofov, and M. I. Kleandrov, Muborizai ran their own drug user registries which were periodically ziddi Nash’amandi va Zahrmandi (Dushanbe: Irfon, cross-examined and synchronized, but the register of nar- 1989), 8-9. cological facilities greatly depended on the level of activi- 57 Babaian and Gonopol’sky, Narkologiia, 38. ty of the police. 16 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

ble drug abuse was in the West, especially However, it would be a gross mistake to suggest in America. Now they were obliged to that all Soviet literature on drugs from the late show how horrible drug abuse was in the 1980s and early 1990s was a pure invention of motherland. So they looked for or simply unscrupulous authors. There were thousands of invented stories of horror, and they could publications, many of which were written by pro- use American stories by substituting fessionals in their respective fields. Newspaper Moscow for New York City, and Dr. Ivanov articles on drugs regularly featured interviews for Dr. Smith, and “an addict spends a with key public health and law enforcement fig- minimum of 100 rubles a day to support ures, although one should bear in mind that they his drug needs” for “…100 dollars a day…” might not have provided accurate information or And they have been able to get away with might have deliberately distorted information. all this because they were writing for still Many journalists were also able to visit drug less knowledgeable audience.60 treatment facilities or join some sorts of ‘coun- ternarcotics’ operations and then write on the basis of such field exposures. Soviet narcologists 60 Michael B. Levin, “The Pattern of Drug Use Diffusion in the USSR” (MSc dissertation, University of Wisconsin, themselves were often required to write for the 1991), 34-5; See also his foreword in Neuhauser, “The general audience on the ‘dangers of narkomania.’ Market for Illegal Drugs in the Soviet Union in the Late 1980s,” xiii. In his dissertation, Levin suggests that the Apart from newspapers, numerous specialist “total silence” on drug abuse in the USSR was broken at books and journal articles became available as the very end of 1986 (p. 34). Neuhauser also claims that well. Frequently related to the Central Asian re- “[b]eginning in late 1986, articles began to appear in the gion, the glasnost’ era-materials still provide a Soviet press concerning the problem of drug abuse in the wide range of useful factual information and tell- USSR” (p. 2). This, however, is not entirely accurate. Although the number of publications increased substan- ing examples on illegal drug use in the USSR, the tially from that point onward, Soviet media began to dis- state’s measures to address the issue and a myri- cuss the subject more broadly and openly already in the ad of problems facing people and institutions in first half of 1986, with the number of publications in- charge. Thus, one of the main challenges in deal- creasing by the end of the year. See, for example, A. Mos- ing with these sources is to be sensitive to the tovoi, “Kogda Zatsvetaet Mak…,” Komsomol’skaia possible ‘making up’ of horror stories, the demon- Pravda, June 8, 1986 (if we are to trust Mostovoi, then ization of drugs and other limitations in some even before his article was published in Komsomol’skaia texts, while critically analyzing newspaper arti- Pravda Georgian TV had broadcasted a documentary on cles through triangulation with specialist litera- “narkomans, on the tragedy of the sick and on the power- lessness of medicine”); V. Scherban’, “Durman,” Izvesti- ture and unpublished documents. ia, June 27, 1986; T. Karatygina, “U Poslednei Cherty,” Kommunist Tadzhikistana, August 1, 1986; E. Al’bav, Nonetheless, the state-orchestrated mass media “Lik Neduga,” Izvestiia, August 12, 1986; “Opasnoe Pris- construction of the image of drug use and drug trastie. Narkotiki i Narkomany: Tri Aspekta Problemy,” users between 1986 and 1991 is vital for our un- Literaturnaia Gazeta, August 20, 1986; “Chelovek i Za- derstanding of post-Soviet drug discourses and kon. U Opasnoi Cherty,” Argumenty i Fakty, August 26, their role in sustaining and transforming that im- 1986. age. In countries of Central Asia, where the ma- Pointing out “typical blunders common to Soviet anti- drug propaganda” Levin mentioned, among other exam- jority of the population accessed the press that ples, references to “injections of koknar” by some Soviet was published in national languages, one cannot authors, which he suggested “can by no imaginable means overestimate the importance of studying local be taken into a syringe and injected into the human body” newspapers. However, their ‘anti-drug’ messages since “koknar” was “in fact the straw and stalks from the as well as repertoires of terms used to ‘condemn’ poppy plant” (p. 37). Levin is incorrect here, since a tea or what in Russian was called narkomania and those a tincture prepared by soaking in water poppy capsules who were known as narkomans have so far been and/or what he called “koknar” would be also commonly completely ignored.61 known as “koknar” (also spelled as “kuknar”). However, two years earlier, in 1988, Levin published an excellent article on Soviet myths about drugs and drug users. See 61 In 2001, the National Library of Tajikistan issued a Mikhail Levin, “Itak, Narkomaniia,” Ogonek 23 (1988): brief bibliography of newspaper articles on drugs that 18-20. came out in the country in Russian and Tajik since the

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The DSP Sources The availability of and access to the DSP texts seem to vary from country to country. In the Na- In the course of nearly two decades that have fol- tional Library of Tajikistan, for example, staff lowed the collapse of the Soviet Union, several members suggest that all DSP publications have other sets of sources have become available for been made part of the general collections and the study of narcotic drugs in Central Asia. Many that their bibliographical records were integrated of the formerly classified, the so-called DSP (dlia into the general catalogue. Yet, I have not found sluzhebnogo pol’zovaniia or “for official use only”) any records of drug-related DSP publications in publications that were published during Soviet the library’s catalogues and it seems that these times can now be accessed in post-Soviet librar- publications were transferred to a different loca- ies. In fact, some of these materials became par- tion in Dushanbe and are currently under the tially available to the general audience during the control of another entity.63 However, in post- glasnost’ period, when their authors, notably Soviet Central Asia, where the national govern- Anzor Gabiani, Boris Kalachev and Karpek ments treat narcotics as a major security threat, Kurmanov, began to write newspaper and journal one may also come across instances of the repro- articles using their previously restricted access duction of an old DSP material, which has been data or transferred selected sections of their DSP presented as a brand new product designed to theses and monographs into open access books.62 address ‘one of the most pressing issues’ for med- ical, military and other bodies. There was at least one such text in Tajikistan that was published in 2002 as instructions on the identification of peo- late 1980s. These two separate lists, however, are far from ple with psychoactive substance dependencies in complete. See S. R. Muhiddinov (ed.), Nash’amandi – general medical practice. A manual that was de- Dushmani Jomeai Solim (Mavodi Metodiiu Bibliografi) (Dushanbe: Vazorati Farhangi Jumhurii Tojikiston, veloped in Moscow back in 1986 under the auspi- Kitobhonai Millii Jumhurii Tojikiston ba Nomi A. Fir- ces of the USSR Ministry of Health, it then “came davsi, 2001). into being” thanks to the financial support from 62 K. Sh. Kurmanov, “Ugolovnaia Otvetstvennost’ za an international organization, freely available and Khischenie Opiia” (Avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie with no access restrictions, supposedly ‘compiled’ uchenoi stepeni kandidata uridicheskikh nauk, Kazakhskii and even ‘reviewed’ by senior Tajik specialists.64 Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni S. M. Kirova, 1967); K. Sh. Kurmanov, Narkomaniia: Ugolovno-Pravovye i Kriminologicheskie Problemy (Frunze: Ilim, 1989). Primorsky krais, Gorky, Novosibirsk and Lvov oblasts – Anzor Gabiani conducted a study among drug users who among 2,998 drug addicts and users. were known to the state authorities in Soviet Georgia. It Boris Kalachev published numerous articles on the sub- took place between 1967 and 1974 and involved slightly ject of narcotic drugs in Soviet and post-Soviet journals more than one thousand participants, of whom 878 were and newspapers. His publications were in part informed included in the final data analysis. According to Gabiani, by research, which he carried out as a student of the at that time it was the first and the only sociological re- USSR Ministry of Interior’s higher educational institu- search among drug users in the USSR. Findings from this tion. research were initially published in a classified publica- 63 The situation is different in Moscow, where there is a tion. Ten years later, in 1984-1985, Gabiani carried out a special section of the DSP literature in the Russian State follow-up study, which also took place in Georgia and (former Lenin) Library, which can be accessed after sub- enrolled 1,620 respondents. Results of the second study mitting a letter (‘otnoshenie’), describing the nature of were published openly along with some comparisons be- one’s research and providing other details. tween the two samples. See, for example, A. A. Gabiani, 64 See Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneniia SSSR, Upravlenie Na Kraiu Propasti: Narkomaniia i Narkomany (Moscow: Narkologii Glavnogo Upravleniia Lechebno- Mysl’, 1990); A. A. Gabiani, “Narkomaniia: Gor’kie Plo- Profilakticheskoi Pomoschi, Vyiavlenie Bol’nykh Narko- dy Sladkoi Zhizni,” Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia 1 maniiami i Toksikomaniiami v Obschemeditsinskoi Prak- (1987): 48-53; A. A. Gabiani, “Kriminologicheskie tike (Metodicheskie Rekomendatsii) (Moscow, 1986) (on- Aspekty Potrebleniia Narkotikov (Na Materiale ly 250 copies of this restricted document were published Gruzinskoii SSR),” Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Pravo 7 originally); Ministry of Health of the Republic of Tajiki- (1987): 64-9. In 1988-1989, Gabiani conducted two mul- stan, Tajik State Medical University Named after Abuali tiregional surveys, the first one – among 5,801 secondary Ibn Sino, Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Tajiki- school students, and the second one in the cities of Mos- stan, Vyiavlenie Bol’nykh Narkomaniiami i Toksikomani- cow and Tashkent, the Latvian SSR, Stavropolsky and iami v Obschemeditsinskoi Praktike. Metodicheskie Uka- 18 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

Overall, I would emphasize that even though Decrees and Regulations of Soviet Ministries many of the Soviet DSP drug-related publications did not differ dramatically from some of the open Another important source for our understanding access drug literature that has been published are the decrees and instructions of the Ministry of since the late 1980s, these documents significant- Health of the USSR (which were occasionally is- ly contribute to our understanding of how Soviet sued jointly with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, public health and law enforcement authorities the MVD) and of the individual Soviet republics. perceived and responded to drugs in the 1960s- Many of these documents were published in large 1980s. They also provide essential information quantities and served as pillars of narcological on the perceived scale of the drug problem in care in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. those decades, in contrast to its denial in publicly They were generally related to the organization available texts and reports submitted by the So- and provision of drug treatment services and to viet government to the United Nations organiza- the “removal of shortcomings” thereof, to the in- tions.65 troduction and description of specific drug treatment protocols and to the enhancement of “control over the controlled” medications. When compared to specialist journal publications on narcological care in the Soviet state, they draw a zaniia dlia Studentov-Medikov i Vrachei (Dushanbe, more clearly delineated picture of what governed 2002). The post-Soviet Tajik edition was ‘compiled’ by the everyday functioning of the system. A sub- A. A. Saidov, A. D. Davlatov and N. A. Saidova and ‘re- stantial number of these decrees and instructions viewed’ by Iu. A. Shokirov and V. F. Kolomiets. As it is can now be found in the state and medical librar- stated on the second page of the Tajik edition, these in- ies of the former Soviet countries. In some cases, structions “came into being [vypuscheny v svet] through the financial support of the international organization they can also be retrieved from electronic data- ORA International, “Enlightenment against Drugs and bases of legal and regulatory acts, which have be- AIDS” project.” come quite common in these countries. Yet, with 65 In terms of the DSP publications on drug statistics in the exception of one key decree (prikaz) and in- the USSR in the 1960s-1980s, I would particularly high- struction “On the Procedure for Identifying and light Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneniia SSSR, Upravlenie Registering Persons Engaged in Non-Medical Use Meditsinskoi Statistiki i Vychislitel’noi Tekhniki, Tsen- of Narcotic or Other Substances Causing Stupe- tral’nyi Ordena Trudovogo Krasnogo Znameni Nauchno- faction and the Processing and Referral for Man- Issledovatel’skii Institut Sudebnoi Psikhiatrii im. prof. V. datory Treatment of Addicts,” these sources re- P. Serbskogo (Nauchno-Statisticheskii Tsentr Psikhiatrii), 66 Narkologicheskaia Pomosch’ Naseleniiu SSSR v 1965- main largely unstudied. 1977 gg. (Statisticheskie Materialy) (Moscow, 1979); and T. G. Berezneva, M. N. Preobrazhenskaia, N. M. 66 See Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneniia SSSR, Minister- Zaichenko et al., Narkologicheskaia Pomosch’ Naseleniiu stvo Vnutrennikh Del SSSR, Prikaz ot 20 maiia 1988 go- SSSR v 1976-1985 gg. (Statisticheskie Materialy) (Mos- da No. 402/109 “Ob Utverzhdenii Instruktsii o Poriadke cow, 1988). It should be stressed, however, that some of Vyiavleniia i Ucheta Lits, Dopuskaiuschikh Nemed- the DSP publications providing elaborate and comprehen- itsinskoe Potreblenie Narkoticheskikh ili Drugikh Sredstv, sive statistical data were printed in very limited quantities. Vlekuschikh Odurmanivanie, Oformleniia i Napravleniia Narkologicheskaia Pomosch’ Naseleniiu SSSR v 1965- na Prinuditel’noe Lechenie Bol’nykh Narkomaniei” 1977 gg. (Statisticheskie Materialy), for example, had (Moscow, 1988); and Acacia Shields, The Effect of Drug only 70 copies released. There is little doubt that only User Registration Laws on People’s Rights and Health: senior specialists were able to access such literature. Two Key Findings from Russia, Georgia and Ukraine (New ‘non-DSP’ texts, in which Soviet drug statistics for the York: International Harm Reduction Development Pro- 1960-1980s were made available, are: Boris Levin and gram, Open Society Institute, Assessment in Action Se- Mikhail Levin, Narkomaniia i Narkomany (Moscow: ries, 2009), available at: “Prosveschenie,” 1991), 49-52; and Levin, “The Pattern http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/ihrd/articles of Drug Use Diffusion in the USSR,” 27-9. _publications/publications/drugreg_20091001/drugreg_20 For a list of some of the narcotic drugs-related DSP mon- 091001.pdf (accessed March 24, 2010); Lev Levinson and ographs see Kurmanov, Narkomaniia: Ugolovno- Mikhail Torban, Narkouchet: Po Zakony ili po In- Pravovye i Kriminologicheskie Problemy, 223-6. Not all struktsii? Regulirovanie Registratsii Potrebitelei of these texts from Kurmanov’s bibliography were re- Narkotikov v Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow: Anakharsis, stricted access publications. Biblioteka PravLit, 2009), available at http://hand-

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Published Private Memoirs ty-two years fighting drug-related crime in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan and is the author of Although published private memoirs related to his own memoirs, which he publishes in samizdat the topic of narcotic drugs are very uncommon, and in his monographs.69 they became increasingly available after the fall of the Soviet Union.67 Many of these memoirs The author of the third collection of memoirs, were ‘penned’ in Kyrgyzstan, which was home to Turdakun Usubaliev (born 1919), was the first the major legal cultivation of opium poppy (and secretary of the Communist Party in Kyrgyzstan its diversion to an illegal market) between 1916 and led the country for nearly twenty-five years. and 1974. They all dealt with the ‘struggle against In 1996, he published a chapter on “How Kyrgyz- drugs’ issues. Abdylda Isabaev (1904-1979), who stan was getting rid of the threat of narkomania.” was a senior police officer in Soviet Kyrgyzstan These memoirs were written at the end of 1991 until his retirement in 1959 and then became the when the new Kyrgyz government was about to head of the Kyrgyz Ministry of Interior’s Council resume legal opium poppy cultivation in the of Veterans, published some of his memoirs al- country. Usubaliev wrote that he was “deeply ready in the 1960s. Part of these appeared in the concerned” by such plans and that he felt that he Russian language in a restricted access volume. had to express his opinion on the matter.70 How- More recently, Aleksandr Zelichenko reproduced ever, Mumin Shakirov, the author of a book on Isabaev’s memoirs in his book on Afghan narco- narco-business in Russia, suggested that the KGB expansion in the 1990s.68 Zelichenko spent twen- played a crucial role in preventing the recom- mencement of opium cultivation in Kyrgyzstan and that Usubaliyev had been helped to say his help.ru/documents/narkoychet.pdf (accessed March 24, ‘no to drugs.’71 This brings us to the point that 2010); David Otiashvili and Nino Balanchivadze, The System of Registration and Follow-up of Drug Users in memoirs, like any other source, have their own Georgia (Addiction Research Centre, Union Alternative limitations and there are a number of questions Georgia) available in Georgian and English at to ask here. Are we to believe Shakirov (and his www.altgeorgia.ge/documents/registracia-greyscale.pdf source)? Or perhaps the FSB, the post-Soviet suc- (accessed March 24, 2010); Andrei Tolopilo and Leonid Vlasenko, Registratsiia Potrebitelei Narkotikov: Praktika, Posledstviia i Dal’neishie Perspectivy (Ukrainskii Institut ades considered by several Russian authors as “white Issledovanii Politiki v Oblasti Obschestvennogo Zdo- spots” in drug history, which cannot be eliminated due to rov’ia), available at: the lack of available evidence. See Boris Kalachev and http://www.uiphp.org.ua/ua/publications/Guidelines/ (ac- Aleksandr Barinov, “Organizovannaia, cessed March 24, 2010); Emilis Subata and Rokas Uscila, Prestupnaia…Korni Sovremennogo Kriminaliteta Nuzhno Analysis of the Registration of Dependency Patients (Vil- Iskat’ v Dorevoliutsionnykh Operativnykh Svodkakh,” nius: “I can live” Coalition, 2007). Segodnia, October 16, 1996; M. Rusakova, A. Vasil’ev, 67 One of the early Soviet chekists who wrote on his work V. Sal’nikov, and S. Stepashin, “Narkotiki v Rossii,” in against drug smuggling in Central Asia after fleeing the Ia. Gilinsky (ed.), Deviantnost’ i Sotsial’nyi Kontrol’ v USSR is G. S. Agabekov, Ch. K. za Rabotoi (Berlin: Rossii (XIX – XX vv.): Tendentsii i Sotsiologicheskoe Os- Strela, 1931), 69-78. For more recent ‘drug-related’ myslenie, (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo “Aleteiia,” 2000), memoirs of a KGB officer see Erkebek Abdulaev, Pozyv- 226-7. noi – “Kobra”: Zapiski Razvedchika Spetsial’nogo 69 See http://zhurnal.lib.ru/z/zelichenko_a_l/ and Ale- Naznacheniia (Moscow: Al’manakh “Vympel,” 1997). ksandr Zelichenko, Heroin: Formula 1 (Bishkek: ARCHI, 68 Abdylda Isabaev, Menin Zholum (Frunze: Kyrgyzmam- 2007). bas, 1964); Usilit’ Bor’bu s Narkotizmom: Sbornik Mate- 70 Turdakun Usubaliev, Nado Znat’ Proshloe, Chtoby Ne rialov Mezhdunarodnogo Soveschaniia Rukovodiaschikh Oshibat’sia v Buduschem, vol. II (Bishkek: Sham, 1996), Rabotnikov MOOP po Problemam Usileniia Bor’by s 489-514. Narkotizmom. Frunze, 14-15 aprelia 1966 goda (Frunze, 71 Mumin Shakirov, Narkobiznes v Rossii: Mnogolikaia 1966); Zelichenko, Afganskaia Narkoekspansiia 1990-kh Narkomafiia Rasshiriaet Prestupnuiu Deiatel’nost’ v Ros- gg., 101-20. As they appear in Zelichenko’s book, part of sii (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 1998), 100-2. According to Isabaev’s memoirs seems to date back to 1970s. Abdylda Shakirov’s source, it was the MVD that was behind the Isabaev’s memoirs and Karpek Kurmanov’s monograph calls for resuming opium poppy cultivation in Kyrgyz- (see footnote 62) are important sources in terms of offer- stan. Zelichenko, in his turn, blames the group which he ing valuable insights into illegal drug trade and Soviet calls “The Red Professors.” See Zelichenko, Heroin: anti-drug activities in the late 1930s – early 1950s, – dec- Formula 1, 23. 20 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 cessor of the KGB, that wants us to fall into, a ‘be- drugs and crime’ histories though, these commu- nevolent KGB’ versus ‘malevolent MVD’ story- nities are themselves part of the drug ‘problem’ trap, whereby these two bodies often compete and can only be viewed as ‘criminal.’ with each other, and the former presents itself as ‘honest’, ‘highly-skilled’ and ‘dedicated to serving Records and Documentation in Post-Soviet the people’ and may also portray the latter as Archives ‘corrupt’ and ‘unprofessional’? How can we know more about the context and circumstances in Furthermore, there is also a vast amount of un- which a given text was written? What can these published records stored in post-Soviet ar- memoirs tell us about the history of drugs in So- chives.74 As described by Adeeb Khalid, in each viet Central Asia and, even more importantly, what can they not? of the former Soviet republics one can find three sets of archives: “archives that house records of Usubaliev, for example, writes that in 1963 the organs of the state, those that maintain records of chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers An- the Communist Party and its various organs, and astas Mikoian called the head of the RSFSR Minis- the archives of Soviet era-security organs (ChK- try for Protection of Public Order (as the Ministry GPU-OGPU-NKVD-KGB).” 75 Although the state of Interior was named at that time) and asked archives are the most accessible ones (and usual- him to start sending around 600 – 700 militia ly they do have numerous records on narcotic school cadets to Kyrgyzstan on an annual basis, drugs), it is important to remember that from the so that they would stay there for the duration of late 1930s the subject of drugs was a very sensi- the crop collection season and help protect the tive one for the Soviet state. Furthermore, the opium poppy harvest.72 Usubaliev is silent on the state’s policy toward drugs was to fight them, and success or failure of this measure introduced by as far as the majority of ‘registered’ narkomans in the Soviet authorities. But Kalachev and Barinov the post-WWII Soviet Union were concerned – to were not. In the same year as Usubaliev’s mem- oirs were published, they published an article on 74 Contrary to the situation with unpublished records, searching for the ‘roots of modern criminality.’ there are only few published archival documents that are According to them, directly related to the topic of narcotic drugs in the USSR (see footnote 37). Perhaps the most significant material [i]n 1968, the USSR MVD had to deal with that I have seen so far is “Opium i Narkotiki v SSSR,” Istoricheskii Arkhiv 3 (2003): 91-8 preceded by an intro- an incident that happened to the cadets of duction by D. A. Amonzholova, ““Vopros ob Uporia- Novosibirsk militia school when they dochenii Nashego Opiinogo Khoziastva Ves’ma were on a field placement in Kirgizia. Slozhen.” Doklad Komissii Gosplana SSSR. 1924 g.,” Some of the militia guards detained a fe- Istoricheskii Arkhiv 3 (2003): 88-91. However, when I male kolkhoz worker with four kilograms visited Moscow and compared that publication with the of opium. Residents of the neighboring original records in the Russian State Archive of Social kolkhozes found out the news immediate- and Political History (RGASPI), it turned out that, contra- ly and, as a sign of protest, refused to pro- ry to Amonzholova’s assurances, slightly more than a half of that document has in fact been published in Is- vide food to militiamen.73 toricheskii Arkhiv. See RGASPI, f. 151, op. 1, d. 47, ll. 8- 23. Perhaps more important questions to ask about 75 Adeeb Khalid, “Searching for Muslim Voices in Post- this “incident” would be related to the role of the Soviet Archives,” Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 303. This article opium economy in the livelihoods of Soviet com- provides an excellent insight into the limits and possibili- munities and how this economy helped to solve ties presented by these archives. many urgent problems. For the ‘struggle against Not to expand this range but rather to make it more de- tailed, I would also mention military archives and the archives of the Ministries of Internal Affairs. In Tajiki- 72 Usubaliev, Nado Znat’ Proshloe, Chtoby Ne Oshi- stan, many records of the Tajik SSR Council of Ministers bat’sia v Buduschem, 502-3. and the Tajik SSR Supreme Council have not been trans- 73 Kalachev and Barinov, “Organizovannaia, ferred to the Central State Archive or any other archive Prestupnaia…Korni Sovremennogo Kriminaliteta Nuzhno and are stored separately from other records of organs of Iskat’ v Dorevoliutsionnykh Operativnykh Svodkakh.” the state.

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 forcibly treat them, with complete abstinence be- ged from their vaults.79 It should also be remem- ing the only outcome that was acceptable to the bered that many individual documents from the state.76 These three issues have serious implica- tions in terms of where many of the drug-related 79 records were more likely to originate or to end On the KGB archival system see “Chekisms”: Tales of up. the Cheka. A KGB Anthology, compiled by Vasiliy Mi- trokhin (London: The Yurasov Press, 2008), 35-42. Some authors argued that the KGB had also played a cru- In the Soviet Union, especially in the second half cial role in conducting and coordinating ‘external’ opera- of the twentieth century, “fighting” drugs was the tions with drugs outside of the USSR. See Joseph D. responsibility of the Ministry of Interior. This Douglass, Jr., Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America ministry also controlled LTPs, where compulsory and the West. An Exposé of Long-term Russian and Chi- treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts took nese Intelligence Operations Aimed at Achieving the De- place. The “struggle” against drugs was a multi- moralisation and Ultimate Control of the West Through dimensional, almost an all-encompassing catego- Drugs, as a Dimension of the Continuing Leninist World ry in the Soviet state and could have included an- Revolution, 2nd edition (London and New York: Edward Harle, 1999); for a very recent continuation of the theme ything from criminal investigation of illegal drug of “drugs as weapons” that was published on the basis of trade to research on the scope of drug use in a newly declassified records from the Hungarian State Ar- particular region or republic. It is for these basic chives see Lajos Rózsa, “A Psychochemical Weapon reasons that many of the drug-related records are Considered by the Warsaw Pact: A Research Note,” Sub- housed in the MVD archives. stance Use and Misuse 44, no. 2 (2009): 172-8; for the lack of direct evidence in support of Douglass’s claims in However, these archives are normally closed to the foreign intelligence archives of the KGB see Christo- outsiders, this is why most of the late Soviet and pher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Ar- chive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Allen post-Soviet drug histories were written by people Lane, The Penguin Press, 1999) and Christopher Andrew 77 with some law enforcement background. As for and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The KGB the KGB, one of its numerous known and un- and the World (London: Penguin Books, 2006). known tasks was to suppress the smuggling of One Kyrgyzstan-based Federal Security Service officer drugs through the state borders; therefore, some who has a kandidat nauk degree in history and is interest- of its anti-drug activities are reflected in pub- ed in the history of drugs in Central Asia (as well as in lished archival documents related to the history celebratory histories of the Russian border guards) is Le- of frontier troops of the USSR. Whenever domes- onid Sumarokov. Most of his papers are focused on pre- Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia and the KGB archival tic drug consumption and trade would pose ei- records do not appear there. See, for example, L. I. Suma- ther an actual or a perceived threat to the securi- rokov, “Kontrabanda Narkotikov na Iugo-Vostochnykh ty of the state or when links with “external” drug Granitsakh Rossiiskoi Imperii v Kontse XIX – Nachale traffickers would be suspected, the KGB would be XX vv.,” in A. A. Kniazev (ed.), Afganistan i Bezopas- in charge of the case. The KGB was also reported- nost’ Tsentral’noi Azii, vol. III, (Bishkek and Dushanbe: ly involved in the oversight of opium poppy erad- Obschestvennyi Fond Aleksandra Kniazeva, 2006), 300- ication campaigns in Central Asia. 78 Yet, the 9; L. I. Sumarokov, “K Istorii Rasprostraneniia i Pro- chekists’ archives are largely closed and not a sin- izvodstva Narkotikov v Semirech’e,” Vestnik Kyrgyzsko- gle volume of drug history seems to have emer- Rossiiskogo Slavianskogo Universiteta 8, no. 7 (2008): 70-4; L. I. Sumarokov, “Iz Istorii Deiatel’nosti Rossi- iskikh Pogranichnikov po Presecheniiu Nezakonnogo Rasprostraneniia Narkoticheskikh Veschestv v Tsen- tral’noi Azii,” in A. A. Kniazev (ed.), Afganistan i Be- zopasnost’ Tsentral’noi Azii, vol. I, (Bishkek: Ilim, 2004), 76 Although one has to remember that for a certain period 102-12 (this paper is focused on post-Soviet Central of time Soviet WWII veterans, who became dependent on Asia). The only paper with the focus on the early Soviet morphine as a result of biomedical treatment during the period is L. I. Sumarokov, “Tendentsii Razvitiia Opium- war, were able to receive maintenance treatment. noi Kontrabandy na Kirgizskom Uchastke Sovetskoi 77 Some of the key authors of the ‘law enforcement’ drug Granitsy (1917-1930 gg.),” Vestnik Kyrgyzsko- histories are Boris Kalachev, Karpek Kurmanov, and Rossiiskogo Slavianskogo Universiteta 9, no. 3 (2009): Aleksandr Zelichenko. 70-4. 78 Lee, “Dynamics of the Soviet Illegal Drug Market,” Sumarokov’s academic supervisor (nauchnyi rukovodi- 202-3. tel’), Professor Aleksandr Kniazev, also writes on the 22 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

KGB archives that may be available following Association (WPA) as of December 1975. The their formal release by the KGB and its heirs, are trustees were mentioned in the KGB plan by their very likely to be pre-selected “to publicize a ‘posi- initials: family name first, followed by the given tive’ image of the KGB and ‘its more celebrated names (familiia, imia, otchestvo). These trustees cases’” in line with the ‘Chairman’s Order’ and the had “good personal relationships with many re- like.80 nowned Western scientists – psychiatrists” and were expected to influence them in a way that Nevertheless, some significant KGB archival leaks would be favorable to the KGB (a goal which was did occur recently, and the links that appear from not necessarily achieved). Some of the trustees’ several KGB materials may have significant impli- initials, which appeared in Mitrokhin’s notes, cations for future studies of narcology and psy- were BEA, MGV, NRA, and SAV.82 In Bukovsky’s chiatry in Soviet (and post-Soviet) territories. archive, in a September 1976 report addressed to Among the records which Vasili Mitrokhin – a the USSR Communist Party Central Committee, secret dissident who worked for almost thirty the chairman of the KGB Yuri Andropov praises years in the foreign intelligence archives of the the “active and principled position” of the Soviet KGB and who was “exfiltrated” from Russia by the member of the WPA Executive Committee, whose British Secret Intelligence Service in 1992 – real name, hidden behind codename “Professor”, brought to the United Kingdom and which were can now be firmly ascertained as Professor M.E. described by the FBI as “the most complete and Vartanian.83 Until the 6th World Congress of Psy- extensive intelligence ever received from any chiatry held in Honolulu in 1977, Marat Enoko- source,” were notes describing the KGB plan on vich Vartanian had served as a secretary and the neutralizing and countering the West’s campaign only Soviet member of the WPA Executive Com- against the use of psychiatry for political purpos- mittee. es.81 Adopted in December 1975, this plan of ‘agent operational measures’ contained code- In his memoirs on dissidents and madness in names of the KGB agents and initials of the KGB Brezhnev’s and Putin’s “Soviet Union,” Robert van trustees (doverennye litsa – literally “trusted per- Voren provides the following description of Var- sons” – or “co-optees” as they are called by An- tanian: drew and Mitrokhin). When Mitrokhin’s original notes in Russian are crosschecked with other ar- [b]eing by nature flamboyant, hospitable, chival sources that were made available by Vla- full of humor and with a Western style, he dimir Bukovsky in his “Soviet Archive”, many real managed to fool one after the other. It names behind the codenames and initials of Sovi- was second nature to him – he had played et psychiatrists and narcologists become over- this game during his whole scientific ca- whelmingly obvious. reer. With psychiatrists, he would declare that he didn’t know much about the psy- Of the four agents mentioned by Mitrokhin in his chiatric system because he was a geneti- file on political abuse of psychiatry, one agent cist; in front of geneticists, he maintained codenamed “Professor” was the USSR member of that he was “just a psychiatrist” and the Executive Committee of the World Psychiatric 82 Woodrow Wilson Center, Cold War International His- history of narcotic drugs in Soviet and post-Soviet Central tory Project, Virtual Archive Collection, The Mitrokhin Asia. For the Soviet past of Central Asia, some of his Archive. Practicing Psychiatry for Political Purposes. main sources are Azykov, Kurmanov and published ar- Folder #28. The Chekist Anthology. Available at: chival documents on Soviet frontier troops. See footnotes http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/va2/docs/Folder%202 11, 37 and 62 above, and Aleksandr Kniazev, K Istorii i 8.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010). Sovremennomy Sostoianiiu Proizvodstva Narkotikov v 83 Zapiska Komiteta Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti pri Afganistane i Ikh Rasprostraneniia v Tsentral’noi Azii Sovete Ministrov SSSR v TsK KPSS ot 10 sentiabria (Bishkek: Ilim, 2003). 1976, No. 2066-A, “Ob Inspiriruemoi na Zapade Antiso- 80 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The vetskoi Kampanii Protiv “Ispol’zovaniia v SSSR KGB in Europe and the West, 26, 748. Psikhiatrii v Politicheskikh Tseliakh.”” Available at: 81 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/pdfs/ KGB in Europe and the West, 1. psychiat/kgb76-18.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010).

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therefore did not really know all the de- borating the authenticity of Mitrokhin’s materi- tails of genetics. He was as slick as one als, these documents allow us to establish with a could be, and had no problem lying in the high degree of certainty the real identities of the blink of an eye. Being completely unscru- KGB trustees, whose initials were SAV, MGV, BEA, pulous both in words and in behavior, he and NRA. 86 According to Mitrokhin’s records, was the perfect ambassador of Soviet both agents and trustees were defined as “KGB psychiatry.84 helpers, who cast in their lot with the KGB on a long-term basis,” and to whom methods and Figure 3. Marat Vartanian, codename “Professor,” techniques of covert operations were disclosed. (right) with the WPA President, Costas Stefanis However, “trusted persons” themselves func- (left), 1988 (Courtesy Robert van Voren) tioned overtly. They did not have to undergo any

http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/pdfs/ psychiat/kgb76-18.pdf (accessed April 10, 2010). 86 The reserach on the KGB agents and trustees as they appear in documents from Mitrokhin and Bukovsky’s archives was conducted by the author jointly with Robert van Voren, who has been one of the most active western members of the campaign against political abuse of psy- chiatry in the USSR. His new book titled Cold War in Psychiatry: Human Factors, Secret Actors (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010) written on the basis of rec- ords from the KGB, Stasi and FBI archives and uncover- ing the stories of many agents and actors – psychiatrists from the former Communist block countries and the West came out in October 2010. Two more initials from Mitrokhin’s notes on practicing psychiatry for political purposes can be established with a However, a letter from the Ministry of Health to high degree of certainty. These are LDR – Lunts Daniil the USSR Communist Party Central Committee, Romanovich, a notorious psychiatrist from the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry who was personally in- written about forty days after Andropov’s mes- volved in practicing psychiatry for political purposes sage and about ten months after the endorsement against Soviet dissidents, and SZN – Serebriakova Zoia of the KGB plan of ‘agent operational measures’, Nikolaevna, also a well-known political abuser of psychi- contained not only Vartanian’s name. Describing atry, whose name is mentioned in one of the documents the measures on countering the Western anti- from Bukovsky’s archive. Serebriakova worked as the Soviet campaign against the political abuse of Chief Psychoneurology Specialist of the USSR Ministry psychiatry in the USSR, the Ministry of Health in- of Health. In 1971, together with another KGB trustee formed the Party of the establishment of several Nadzharov, she was involved in conducting ministerial investigation in the “Leningrad psychiatric prison” after ‘task forces’ comprised of Snezhnevsky Andrei the Ministry of Health had received a telegram from Vladimirovich, Morozov Georgy Vasil’evich, Ba- Academician Andrei Sakharov, in which he demanded baian Eduard Armenakovich, and Nadzharov Ru- saving the health and dignity of two political prisoners, ben Aleksandrovich.85 Effectively further corro- Viktor Fainberg and Vladimir Borisov. See Zapiska Min- istra Zdravookhraneniia SSSR Zaveduiuschemu Otdelom Nauki i Uchebnykh Zavedenii TsK KPSS ot 25.03.1971, No. 828c. Available at: 84 Robert van Voren, On Dissidents and Madness: From http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/pdfs/ the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev to the “Soviet Un- psychiat/sah71-6.pdf (Accessed April 10, 2010). ion” of Vladimir Putin (Amsterdam and New York: Although Mitrokhin’s notes on abuse of psychiatry con- Rodopi, 2009), 61. tain several other agent codenames and trustee initials, at 85 Zapiska Ministerstva Zdravookhraneniia SSSR v TsK the time of my writing this paper we were unable to locate KPSS ot 22.10.1976g, No. 2750c “O Merakh po Protivo- further corroborating evidence on these people. Without deistviiu Provodimoi na Zapade Antisovetskoi Kampanii such evidence, making any statements on the identities of po Povody “Ispol’zovaniia Psikhiatrii v SSSR v Politich- individuals hidden behind those codenames and initials eskikh Tseliakh.” Available at: would be premature. 24 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 special training and submit written reports and role of the main apologist of Soviet psychiatry.88 were assigned tasks of a one-off nature (razovye It is also, very likely, not a mere coincidence that porucheniia).87 Babaian was successfully appointed the Chairman of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in 1977, Figure 4. Georgy Morozov in Tajikistan (third at the time when the KGB was actively seeking to from the right). “A Group of Participants of the improve the image of Soviet psychiatry (of which First All-Union Symposium in Tajikistan, Dushanbe, narcology was a sub-specialty).89 1984” (The Central State Archive of Film, Photo and Audio Documents of the Republic of Tajiki- What is particularly important, though, is the stan, Card No. 0-91412) nexus between Soviet secret services and doctors and the medical profession’s lack of autonomy. We are often inclined to consider these two groups separately and speak, for example, of the different interests of narcologists and counter- narcotics agents, and of the medical and the legal bodies.’90 Yet, Mitrokhin and Bukovsky’s archives clearly demonstrate that leading Soviet psychia- trists, neurologists and narcologists were serving the interests of the KGB, and that the KGB had a rather high level of control over the activities of the Ministry of Health.

There is not a single reason to believe that this situation has changed in post-Soviet Russia as well as in some, if not all, of the Central Asian

countries. Bridging the gap between ‘legal’ and ‘medical’ may have serious implications for our The fact that some of the most senior health care research on contemporary drug policies and officials who were also very active in the interna- practices of the former Soviet republics, with the tional arena were co-opted by the KGB as “trust- resistance to substitution therapy, on the one ed persons” should not be so surprising, perhaps, hand, and the involvement of the police and other since in Soviet psychiatry and narcology one state actors in drug trade, on the other, being 91 could have achieved and retained on a long-term some of the most pressing examples. basis the types of positions held by SAV, MGV and 88 BEA only by putting loyalty to the KGB and the “Narkomaniia: Tsena Illiuzii. Direktor Tsentral’nogo Party above anything else, including medical eth- Nauchno-Issledovatel’skogo Instituta Obschei i Sudebnoi Psikhiatrii Akademik AMN SSSR G. Morozov Otvechaet ics and patients’ rights. This helps to form a bet- na Voprosy Nashego Korrespondenta,” Sovetskaia ter understanding as to why Babaian and Moro- Kul’tura, May 20, 1986; see also footnotes 26, 28 and 29. zov were usually ‘entrusted’ to lie about narko- 89 Obituary, Edouard Armenakovich Babayan. Interna- mania in the USSR, with Vartanian playing the tional Narcotics Control Board. Available at http://www.incb.org/incb/en/obituary_babayan.html (ac- cessed April 10, 2010). 90 See, for example, how in one of my earlier papers on 87 Woodrow Wilson Center, Cold War International His- opioid substitution therapy in Tajikistan I do not raise the tory Project, Virtual Archive Collection, The Mitrokhin ‘nexus’ question when considering the interests of nar- Archive. The Operational Situation as Reported in 1971, cologists and law enforcement officers in relation to their 1975, and 1981. Folder 35. The Chekist Anthology. resistance to opioid substitution therapy: Alisher Latypov, Available at: “Opioid Substitution Therapy in Tajikistan: Another Per- http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/va2/docs/Volume%20 petual Pilot?” The International Journal of Drug Policy 35%20- 21, no. 5 (2010), 407-10. %20The%20Operational%20Situation%20as%20Reporte 91 Among the most recent works on these issues are Anya d%20in%201971,%201975,%20and%201981.pdf (ac- Sarang, Tim Rhodes, Nicolas Sheon, and Kimberly Page, cessed April 10, 2010). “Policing Drug Users in Russia: Risk, Fear, and Structural

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Figure 5. The Legacy of the KGB’s ‘Trusted Per- of its ‘guidelines’ and competing, at least until the son’: A Wooden Portrait of “Academician G. V. Mo- later years of the Gorbachev-initiated reforms, to rozov.” Department of Psychiatry and Narcology of present “the most rapid and striking successes.”92 the Tajik State Medical University, Summer 2009. Eventually, as the fight against drugs was proving to be more and more fruitless, the number of res- olutions adopted by the Party and various state organs increased while the achievements tended to occupy less space in the reports. Thus, the par- ty archives may often serve as a shortcut to some of the MVD and the KGB’s materials (as well as reports of other organizations charged with drug enforcement, treatment and prevention func- tions) otherwise inaccessible to researchers.

However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the control over the Communist Party archives with all their sensitive materials was taken over by the presidential administrations (apparat prezidenta) in many post-Soviet countries. In Russia, where the party archives are split between the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History and the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, the first two welcome both local and international scholars, whereas the access to the presidential archive is granted to a limited num- ber of carefully chosen researchers. 93 Reportedly, the party archives of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are largely open and accessible. The situation is different in Uzbekistan, where only few “hand- Furthermore, since the Soviet Union was a single picked” scholars have access.94 In Tajikistan, the party-state, where the Communist Party made party archive remains under control of the Com- policy decisions and was deeply and directly in- munist Party (although it is based within the volved in handling all sensitive matters, the ar- premises of the presidential office) and its Du- chives of the Communist Party are a ‘treasure- shanbe-based Central Committee has retained trove’ of materials on narcotic drugs in the USSR. full discretion to make access-related decisions in This is particularly the case for the period be- each individual case. tween 1958 and the late 1980s, when the Party made numerous resolutions to “fight narkoma- 92 On the distinct characteristics of Soviet campaigns see nia.” After adopting these resolutions, hundreds Stephen White, Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and So- of documents were submitted by local authori- ciety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 85, ties, reporting to the Party on the implementation 110. Two other ‘focal points’ that often received drug-related reports from other organs of the state were the Council of Violence,” (with commentaries), Substance Use and Mis- Ministers and the Supreme Council. use 45, no. 6 (2010): 813-64; David Lewis, “High Times 93 Some of the documents from the Russian State Archive on the Silk Road: The Central Asian Paradox,” World of Contemporary History related to the political abuse of Policy Journal 27, no. 1 (2010): 39-49; Alisher Latypov, psychiatry in the USSR are freely available online at the “Barygi, Narcobarony i Narkodel’tsy: Narkoprestupnost i “Soviet Archive” of Vladimir Bukovsky: Rynki Narkotikov v Tadzhikistane,” in Kyrgyzstan Skvoz’ http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/buk. Prizmu Narkonomiki (Bishkek: Obschestvennyi Fond html “Tsentral’no-Aziatskii Tsentr Narkopolitiki, 2011), 271- 94 Khalid, “Searching for Muslim Voices in Post-Soviet 319. Archives,” 303. 26 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

Nonetheless, it needs to be stressed that though III. RE-WRITING SOVIET AND WRITING POST- state-generated unpublished records from post- SOVIET: DRUG HISTORIES AFTER GLASNOST’ Soviet archives can tell us about the state’s re- sponse to narkomania, their perspective is more Some initial revisionist works on Soviet drug his- limited when it comes to drug users’ response to tories, re-written since the late 1930s, came out the war on drugs. They are also far less focused in the later years of glasnost’. Central Asian au- on the rich cultural and medicinal uses of opiates thors have also published a small number of his- and cannabis in Central Asia than on demoniza- torical studies of narcotic drugs after the demise tion of drugs in Central Asian society.95 of the Soviet Union. From the mid-1990s, when the governments of Central Asia faced increasing Patient Case History Records and large-scale trafficking of opiates from Af- ghanistan, articles and reports on drug abuse and Finally, there are patient case history records, drug trade in the region became quite common. which are housed at various narcological and Although the majority of these recent publica- psychiatric institutions across Central Asia and tions were primarily concerned with the contem- other former Soviet regions. When available and porary situation, they often had to provide the related to the Soviet period, these records can historical background of their subject and to say provide inter alia great insight into the collabora- something about drugs in the past. There are sev- tion between the police and narcologists in con- eral key questions that may legitimately arise trolling drug users who were known to the with regard to these works now, after we have state.96 They are also a wonderful reflection of the considered in general terms the transformation failure of Soviet drug treatment strategies and of Soviet drug histories as well as historiograph- practices to achieve an “enduring (stoikaia) long- ical implications of using and not using various term remission” of drug use among patients. Yet, sources. Particularly, how do these works ap- while being a rich source on patients’ profiles, proach the history of narcotic drugs in Soviet experiences and patterns of drug use, they are of Central Asia? What kinds of sources do they use little help with regard to the overwhelming ma- or not use, and how do they interpret their jority of other people who used narcotic drugs in sources? the Soviet Union and managed to successfully stay beyond the reach of the police and narcolog- Among the main problems with some of these ical centers.97 publications is their concern with the problem itself, and not with the problematization, that is, 95 Of the archives outside of the former Soviet Republics, they do not adequately address the question, how I would highlight the India Office Records and its materi- and under what conditions narcotic drugs came als relating to Russian Central Asia, which are housed at to be constructed as a ‘problem.’98 It sometimes the British Library in London. Some of these materials seems that the whole purpose of writing about deal with smuggling of narcotic drugs from Soviet Turke- drugs in Central Asia and other former Soviet re- stan to Chinese Turkestan. Guide to these records is avail- gions is to establish when drugs became a ‘prob- able at: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/centralasia/2 009revisedguide.pdf (accessed March 28, 2010). The WHO records and archives in Geneva have a very exten- Asia is to carry out oral histories. For a recent ground- sive collection of documents on international narcotics breaking work on Soviet and post-Soviet narcology in control (e.g. records related to sessions of the UN Com- Uzbekistan that effectively incorporates oral histories into mission on Narcotic Drugs and sessions of the Interna- the analysis of narcological discourse see Richard Elo- tional Narcotics Control Board), which also cover the vich, “Behind Every Doctor is a Policeman: Narcology, Soviet Union. Drug Users, and Civil Society in Uzbekistan” (PhD dis- 96 As mentioned above, Soviet Central Asian drug treat- sertation, Columbia University, 2008). For oral histories ment facilities were first established in Turkmenistan and on drug trade and use in Soviet Badakhshan see Uzbekistan. However, some records from Turkmenistan Keshavjee, “Medicines and Transitions: The Political were lost due to the earthquake in Ashkhabad in 1948. Economy of Health and Social Change in Post-Soviet 97 Although in this paper I primarily consider written tex- Badakhshan, Tajikistan,” 371-7. tual sources, another feasible, and indeed essential way of 98 I am thankful to Professor Roger Cooter for raising this studying the history of narcotic drugs in Soviet Central issue during our “work in progress” seminar.

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 lem’ and to describe how grave the problem is.99 Until the mid-1990s, the drug issue was But many authors simply do not have direct ac- perceived by the Central Asian states as a cess to data on the scope of and response to the problem affecting the foreign countries ‘problem’ during the Soviet period and at best only.104 refer to secondary sources providing some his- torical perspective.100 Back in 1990, when Neu- Until recently the governments of Ka- hauser wrote her paper on illegal drugs in the zakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turk- USSR, she believed that it was “not possible to menistan and Uzbekistan did not consider judge whether the state policy was to ignore an narcotics as a serious threat…According actual problem, or if the state officials (particular- to official statements, the former Soviet ly at the top levels of state and party organiza- Union including Central Asia did not have tions) simply did not realize that there was a a drug abuse problem.105 problem – because “bad news” did not reach the top decision and opinion making level of Soviet Heroin: Formula 1, 28. This, however, contradicts his society.”101 other monograph, where he talks about the “origins of Afghan drug trafficking” and admits that drug couriers Despite the opening of the region with its vast were able to penetrate the borders of USSR and hide collections of archival and other materials, the drugs, firearms and “pro-Islamic” literature on the territo- situation has hardly changed in the last two dec- ries of the Uzbek and Tajik SSRs already during the years ades. Outside of academia, the Soviets are often of Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. See Zelichenko, Af- viewed as ignorant “ham-fisted buffoons,” 102 and ganskaia Narkoekspansiia 1990-kh gg., 28-9. But even if for many authors in scholarly circles drugs only this was so, foreign traffickers were not the only group become a ‘problem’ in Central Asia in the post- operating along the Soviet-Afghan border, and according to self-reported information by one former Komsomol Soviet period. To be more specific, let us now group leader in Gorno-Badakhshan, he and his friends look at some examples of recent works proposing were able to bring drugs from Afghanistan without being that Central Asian states did not have to worry caught by the border guards and law enforcement authori- about narcotics before the large-scale Afghan ties since the early 1980s, which apparently had nothing drug expansion in the 1990s:103 to do with the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. See Keshavjee, “Medicines and Transitions: The Political Economy of Health and Social Change in Post-Soviet 99 Judging in terms of how extremely frequently the word Badakhshan, Tajikistan,” 374-7. On smuggling of drugs “problem” appears in the titles and contents of Soviet from Afghanistan to Tajik SSR and using Gorno- Russian language texts on narcotic drugs, many of the so- Badakshan Oblast, Dushanbe and Osh as transhipment called ‘primary’ sources themselves appear to be rather points in the late 1980s as well as related counternarcotics heavily focused on the ‘problem’, suggesting what maybe activities of the Tajik KGB see N. Kozlova, ““Zolotoi termed a ‘chronic and pervasive preoccupation’ with the Treugol’nik” u Nashikh Granits?” Rabochaia Tribuna, drug ‘problem’ in Soviet and post-Soviet republics. July 19, 1990. 100 See, for example, Maral Madi, “Drug Trade in Kyr- Furthermore, judging about the emergence of the drug gyzstan: Structure, Implications and Countermeasures,” trafficking ‘problem’ solely on the basis of the first Kyr- Central Asian Survey 23, no. 3-4 (2004): 251; Tamara gyz seizure of opium from Afghanistan is not helpful ei- Makarenko, “Crime, Terror and the Central Asian Drug ther since such seizures were made elsewhere in Central Trade,” Harvard Asia Quarterly 6, no. 3 (2002): 3 (page Asia long before 1992. In Turkmenistan, for example, number given as it appears in the author’s electronic ver- KGB officials publicly acknowledged that they were able sion of the article). to dismantle several well-connected rings trafficking in 101 Neuhauser, “The Market for Illegal Drugs in the Soviet Afghan drugs during the 1980s. See V. Kuleshov, “Na Union in the Late 1980s,” 12-3. Skam’e Podsudimykh – Narkobanda,” Izvestiia, February 102 Khalid, Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics 12, 1990. in Central Asia, 3-4. 104 United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime 103 Zelichenko suggests that the problem of Afghan drug Prevention, Illicit Drug Situation in the Regions Neigh- trafficking first emerged in Central Asia in 1992, when bouring Afghanistan and the Response of ODCCP five kilograms of opium of Afghan origin were seized in (UNODCCP, 2002), 23. Kyrgyzstan for the very first time.” See Aleksandr Zeli- 105 Kairat Osmonaliev, Developing Counter-Narcotics chenko, “Narkosituatsiia v Zone Deistviia Mezhdunarod- Policy in Central Asia: Legal and Political Dimensions nogo Antinarkotikovogo Proekta OON “Oshskii Uzel”,” (Silk Road Studies Program and Central Asia-Caucasus Tsentral’naia Aziia i Kavkaz 5 (1999): 170; Zelichenko, Institute, 2005), 9 and footnote 1. 28 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in if many of the ‘problems’ that Central Asian re- 1991, Tajikistan has experienced an ex- publics face today, such as corruption among traordinary and devastating expansion of state officials and counternarcotics officers, the opiate trafficking and consumption. Until focus on drug users rather than on drug traffick- the mid-1990s, heroin was virtually un- ers when “fighting” drugs, and the failure to pro- known in the country, and other opiates vide adequate treatment to people who use drugs were not major sources of concern.106 are not new in post-Soviet Central Asia and in fact have roots going back to the 1920s (and beyond)? Heroin addiction and AIDS were almost How might this conceptualization of continuity unknown in the Central Asian republics change our understanding of the nature of these during the Soviet era. Opium had been ‘problems’ and the solutions that both state and grown in Kyrgyzstan until the 1970s, and non-state actors alike seek to locate? These and there was a small illicit trade in the drug, many other questions have very important impli- but the problem was on such a limited cations not only for the practical purposes of pol- scale that it never merited much atten- icy-makers but also for our interpretation of dif- tion.107 ferent perspectives and agendas (especially the ‘drug enforcement’ ones) that we may or may not This flow of illegal narcotics through post- find in post-Soviet drug histories. Soviet Central Asia is a relatively new phenomenon largely because borders Figure 6. An Empty Package of Afghan Heroin De- were, in effect, closed under the Soviet picting an Outline of the Borders of Afghanistan regime.108 and Naming the Surrounding Countries, with an Arrow Pointing Towards Tajikistan, 2003 (Courte- Post-Soviet Central Asian governments usually sy of the Tajik Drug Control Agency) portray a similar picture in their national reports on drugs and related issues.109 And when the lo- cal state actors themselves reinforce the message that they did not have any problems with drugs until “very recently,” then at some point this starts to become common knowledge. The result is an unambiguous message: there is nothing to learn about drugs from the Soviet past. But what

106 Letizia Paoli, Irina Rabkov, Victoria Greenfield, and Peter Reuter, “Tajikistan: The Rise of a Narco-State,” Journal of Drug Issues 37, no. 4 (2007): 951. 107 International Crisis Group, “Central Asia: Drugs and Conflict,” ICG Asia Report no. 25 (2001), 1. 108 Nicole Jackson, “The Trafficking of Narcotics, Arms and Humans in Post-Soviet Central Asia: (Mis)perceptions, Policies and Realities,” Central Asian Survey 24, no. 1 (2005): 40. 109 See, for example, Pravitel’stvo Kyrgyzskoi Respubliki, Gosudarstvennaia Programma po Profilaktike SPIDa, Infektsii, Peredaiuschikhsia Polovym i In”ektsionnym Putem, v Kyrgyzskoi Respublike na 2001-2005 Gody (Bishkek, 2002), 23; Sulhiddin Nidoev, Abdulkhamid Norov, Mirzosharif Odinaev, Zarrina Seidalieva, Zukhra Nurliaminova, and Sherali Rabiev (eds), Narkosituatsiia v Respublike Tadzhikistan v 2007 Gody. Godovoi Otchet (Dushanbe, 2008), 21; Agentstvo po Kontroliu za I am not arguing that Afghanistan’s becoming the Narkotikami pri Prezidente Respubliki Tadzhikistan, Ob- world leader in the production of opiates and re- zor o Narkosituatsii v Respublike Tadzhikistan za 2008 lated widespread availability of heroin in Central god (Dushanbe, 2009), 5.

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Asia has not had a major impact on the magni- I am also not claiming that it is impossible to ap- tude of the ‘problem’ in the region, as shown in proach these sources critically and construct a many recent texts. Instead, what I am suggesting meaningful narrative despite all their limitations. is that even if we are to look at production, con- Instead, what I want to emphasize is the possibil- sumption or seizure-related figures and trends, ity of feeding the desired information to journal- then we can very easily establish that drugs have ists and other ‘visitors’ who, if they fail to recog- been a ‘problem’ in Central Asia in different plac- nize the limitations of their original source and es and different times throughout the Soviet pe- triangulate it with other materials, may then feed riod. Furthermore, it needs to be stressed that that information to larger audiences. Although published post-Soviet sources, which are often there may be different reasons and motives for used by Central Asian, Russian and Western au- state officials and law enforcement officers to say, thors, such as local newspaper articles or other or to not say, certain things, nowhere is the prob- mass media publications, brochures produced by lem with the information they supply more evi- the local drug control agencies as well as inter- dent than in their sidestepping of sensitive issues views of the Central Asian drug czars, do have at and avoiding getting into the problematization least as many limits as any Soviet era-source. territory.

First of all, almost none of them are historically A similar, although slightly more cautious, ap- informed. The so-called “drug situation reports” proach to the history of narcotic drugs in Central issued by the local drug control authorities in Asia, is to acknowledge that they have been in- Central Asian republics surely look more like ac- grained in the local culture “for centuries” – sug- tivity reports concerned with depicting ‘achieve- gesting a somewhat untraceable history that de- ments’ of counternarcotics agencies and present- fies further attempts to unpack “drugs” from their ing statistics relative to their own goals and pri- “cultural” embedding – and then return to the orities. Many horror stories about ‘desperate contemporary dimensions of drug use and drug junkies’ aimed to discourage initiation of drug trade in the region.111 For example, Michael Levin use among the youngsters continue to represent believes that “traditional usage of drugs among quite sweeping fabrications. But this is not the peoples that live in the Soviet Union has never only weakness of mass media reports as a source. been depicted in any source.”112 This argument Quite often they are based on the information does not take into consideration traditional (also derived from interviews or press conferences or- labeled ‘non-traditional’ by Soviet representa- ganized by the law enforcement authorities. Few tives of biomedicine, who then came to view interviewers though suspect the existence of re- themselves as part of ‘tradition’) indigenous med- stricted access manuals developed for the law ical practitioners in Central Asia, whose use of enforcement officers and providing advice and opium for medicinal purposes has been men- recommendations on what to say (and, most like- tioned in scores of pre-Soviet and Soviet texts. ly, what not to say) when giving interviews to Neither does it recognize the existence of an im- journalists. One such manual, issued by the presi- mense literature on the use of drugs in the con- dential drug control agency for the internal use of text of male and female entertainment in Central its officers, does exist in Tajikistan – the country where the contemporary drug ‘problem’ is one of the most widely covered in Central Asia.110 Respubliki Tadzhikistan, 5 Let na Strazhe Buduschego 110 Agentstvo po Kontroliu za Narkotikami pri Prezidente (Dushanbe, 2004), 6. Respubliki Tadzhikistan, Shtab, Tsentr Obschestvennykh 111 See, for example, Martin Booth, Opium: A History Sviazei, Prakticheskie Rekommendatsii i Sovety Sotrudni- (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 317; Letizia kam AKN, Daiuschim Interv’iu Zhurnalistam. Dlya Slu- Paoli, “The Price of Freedom: Illegal Drug Markets and zhebnogo Pol’zovaniia (Dushanbe, 2003). I did not access Policies in Post-Soviet Russia,” Annals of the American this manual but the image of the front page of this publi- Academy of Political and Social Science 582, no. 1 cation has been reproduced in the open access “publica- (2002): 169; Neuhauser, “The Market for Illegal Drugs in tion on the history of the Drug Control Agency of Tajiki- the Soviet Union in the Late 1980s,” 15. stan, at the time of its fifth – Jubilee – anniversary.” See 112 Levin, “The Pattern of Drug Use Diffusion in the Agentstvo po Kontroliu za Narkotikami pri Prezidente USSR,” 21. 30 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012

Asia as well as many other primary sources.113 In either case, the language “for centuries” or “not Related to this is Levin’s other misleading state- until the mid-1990s,” which dismisses profound ment that “[h]istorically, there were two major and complex transformations that took place on patterns of drug use in the Soviet Union: 1) tradi- the Central Asian drug scene during the Soviet tional use of opiates and cannabis by peoples of period, is entirely unhelpful. Nonetheless, the Moslem culture, mostly in Central Asia; and 2) above two approaches are certainly not the only drug abuse among criminals.”114 ones. The other two main perspectives can be roughly outlined as: Soviet narkomania was ‘sort- However, as soon as attempts to provide addi- ed out’ in the 1930s, or it emerged only after the tional comments on culture, tradition and drugs Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in 1979. The for- in Central Asia are made, significant contradic- mer view has been informed by the body of re- tions arise. Nalin Kumar Mohapatra claims that search on subjects such as drugs, smuggling, “Central Asia along with Afghanistan has had a crime and deviance in early Soviet Union. Yet, this long history of production and consumption of research has been developed by a small group of drugs” and traces modern history “back to the Russian historians and deals primarily with the eighteenth century, when Turkmens and Tajik- city of St. Petersburg (Petrograd/ Leningrad) and Ismailies, based in the northern part of Afghani- the Russian Far East.117 Their inquiry into drugs stan, started using drugs for medical purpos- es.”115 However, a completely opposite perspec- in any language to provide an overview of drug use in one tive emerges from Makarenko’s paper, when she of the Central Asian regions/republics since the late nine- looks at the historical roots of opium use in Cen- teenth and throughout the twentieth centuries. However, tral Asia. Referring to Kerimi’s work on opium as she herself admits, in such a short paper one can only use in Turkmenistan, Tamara Makarenko writes provide an enormously generalized outline of how the patterns of both drug use and the ‘struggle’ against drugs that “[o]pium was commonly used [in Central might have changed over more than one hundred years, Asia] for medicinal purposes until the eighteenth “leaving unanswered the questions about why.” See century when opium was increasingly used for Kerimi, “Opium Use in Turkmenistan: A Historical Per- recreation due to the widespread availability of spective,” 1319. Nevertheless, given how extremely the drug. As opium use expanded, social and po- widespread opium use was in Turkmenistan compared to litical attitudes towards the drug changed from other republics (for example, according to one estimate 'panacea to evil'…”116 made by the USSR MVD, there were about 250-300 thou- sand drug users in Turkmenistan in 1967) and how signif- icantly it contradicted the Soviet order, this paper seems 113 To name just a few of these numerous sources: see to have left a number of key how questions unanswered as Moravitsky, “O Narkoticheskikh i Nekotorykh Drugikh well. Iadovitykh Veschestvakh, Upotrebliaemykh Naseleniem 117 Natal’ia Lebina, Povsednevnaia Zhizn’ Sovetskogo Ferganskoi Oblasti,” Hāji Muin Ibn Shukrullah, Goroda: Normy i Anomalii. 1920 – 1930 gody (St. Pe- Turkistānilar Maishatidan: Kuknāri (Bir Pardalik Kulgu) tersburg: Zhurnal “Neva” – Izdatel’sko-Torgovyi Dom (Samarqand: Gāzāruf Bosmakhonasi, 1916), E. M. Pesch- “Letnii Sad,” 1999), 27-33; Natal’ia Lebina, “Narkoman ereva, “Prazdnik Tiul’pana (Lola) v sel. Isfara Ko- iz Narkomata i Klub Morfinistov Revoliutsionnogo kandskogo Uezda,” in Alexandr Shmidt and Evgenii Baltflota,” Vechernii Peterburg, April 12, 1996; M. Betger (eds), V. V. Bartol’du: Turkestanskie Druz’ia, Shkarovsky, “Sem’ Imen “Koshki”: Rastsvet Narkomanii Ucheniki i Pochitateli, (Tashkent: Obschestvo dlia v 1917–1920-e gody,” in A. I. Dobkin and A. B. Kobak Izucheniia Tadzhikistana i Iranskikh Narodnostei za Ego (eds), Nevskii Arkhiv: Istoriko-Kraevedcheskii Sbornik, Predelami, 1927), 374-84; K. K. Vereschagin, ““Narko- vol. III, (St. Petersburg: ATHENEUM, FENIKS, Bal- mania” Grudnykh Detei,” Vrachebnoe Delo 3 (1928): tiiskii Gumanitarnyi Fond, 1997), 467-77; S. E. Panin, 248; etc. “Potreblenie Narkotikov v Sovetskoi Rossii (1917–1920-e 114 Levin, “The Pattern of Drug Use Diffusion in the gody),” Voprosy Istorii 8 (2003): 129-34; V. I. Musaev, USSR,” 20-1. Prestupnost’ v Petrograde v 1917–1921 gg. i Bor’ba s 115 Nalin Kumar Mohapatra, “Political and Security Chal- Nei (St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001), 176-80; P. A. lenges in Central Asia: The Drug Trafficking Dimension,” Vasil’ev, “Narkotizm v Petrograde-Leningrade (1917– International Studies 44, no. 2 (2007): 159; 1924 gg.): Puti Resheniia Sotsial’noi Problemy,” in 116 Makarenko, “Crime, Terror and the Central Asian Vlast’, Obschestvo i Lichnost’ v Istorii. Sbornik Statei po Drug Trade,” 3. Materialam Nauchnoi Konferentsii, 22-24 Noiabria 2006 Kerimi’s article, which provides a historical perspective g. (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk, Gosudar- on opium use in Turkmenistan, is arguably the only text stvennyi Universitet Gumanitarnykh Nauk, Nauchno-

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 relates to the period between 1917 and the late drugs in Afghanistan.119 But, apart from paying 1920s and, whenever it covers the 1930s, the little heed to or underestimating the significance usual ‘finale’ is that everything gets “liquidated” of the ‘problem’ in earlier decades, they often before the late 1930s: drug use statistics and in- seem to ignore the Soviet narcological literature, stitutions responsible for collecting such infor- which instead blames the last Soviet anti-alcohol mation; drug addiction and narcological dispen- campaign for the narcotic drug epidemic of the saries established earlier to treat narkomania. In late 1980s.120 parallel to a general agreement among these his- torians that drug abuse continued to take place in However, every now and then one can still come the Soviet Union beyond the late 1930s, there is across a whole range of statements offering al- also an inclination to erroneously suggest that for ternative explanations of the Soviet drug ‘prob- that period we may not have further data (until lem.’ Louise Shelley and Svante Cornell rightly we are told by the state that widespread drug ad- point out that drug abuse “was a serious problem diction does exist in ‘our society’).118 As for the even before the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan,” latter, authors who seek to locate the roots of So- although they suggest that it “dates back to the viet drug addiction within the cohort of Afghan Khrushchev years.”121 Mumin Shakirov believes war veterans, usually imply that prior to the in- that 1980, the year of the Moscow Olympics, vasion the Soviets did not have any serious drug marked the “beginning of narco-expansion,” ‘problem’ and that the rapid increase of drug whereas Irina Komissina and Azhdar Kurtov sug- abuse in the USSR since the mid-1980s can be gest that the decision made by the USSR Supreme mainly or partially attributed to their exposure to Council in 1991 on abolishing criminal liability for non-medicinal drug use per se became the “first thrust toward widespread proliferation of

Obrazovatel’nyi Tsentr po Istorii, 2010), 134-151 (I am 119 Martha Brill Olcott and Natalia Udalova, “Drug Traf- thankful to Pavel Vasil’ev for kindly sharing his paper ficking on the Great Silk Road: The Security Environment with me); O. V. Zalesskaia, “Kontrabandnaia Torgovlia s in Central Asia,” Russian and Eurasian Program Working Kitaem na Sovetskom Dal’nem Vostoke. 1920–1930-e Papers, no. 11 (Carnegie Endowment for International gg.,” Voprosy Istorii 4 (2008): 146-50; Golovin, Peace, 2000): 14; Makarenko, “Crime, Terror and the “Polozhenie Kitaiskogo Naseleniia na Dal’nem Vostoke Central Asian Drug Trade,” 3; Lewis, “High Times on the Rossii v 60-e gg. XIX v. – 30-e gg. XX v.,” 40-3; Silk Road: The Central Asian Paradox,” 40-1; Alexandra Khudiakov, “Iz Istorii Bor’by s Narkomaniei na Dal’nem V. Orlova, “The Russian “War on Drugs”: A Kinder, Vostoke v Nachale 20-kh gg.,” 424-30; P. P. Khudiakov, Gentler Approach?” Problems of Post-Communism 56, “Iz Istorii Bor’by s Narkomaniei na Dal’nem Vostoke v no. 1 (2009): 23 (although Orlova’s claims are more in Nachale 20-kh gg.,” in D. P. Bolotin et al. (eds), Rossiia i line with ‘no problems until the post-Soviet era’ ap- Kitai na Dal’nevostochnykh Rubezhakh, vol. II, proach). (Blagoveschensk: Izdatel’stvo Amurskogo 120 Urakov, Pelipas, and Miroshnichenko, “Dinamika Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 2001), 424-30; P. P. Rasprostranennosti Narkomanii v SSSR,” 50; V. V. Khudiakov, “Vliianie Inostrannogo Faktora na Ivanov, “Narkologicheskaia Sluzhba i Profilaktika Formirovanie Kriminogennoi Obstanovki v Narkotizma,” Voprosy Narkologii 2 (1990): 44-9; V. F. Dal’nevostochnom Regione v 20-e gg. XX v.,” in D. P. Egorov, E. S. Drozdov, N. I. Shibanova, A. A. Sergeev, Bolotin et al. (eds), Rossiia i Kitai na Dal’nevostochnykh and S. S. Alekseev, “O Sostoianii Narkologicheskoi Rubezhakh, vol. IV, (Blagoveschensk: Izdatel’stvo Pomoschi Naseleniiu,” Voprosy Narkologii 1 (1991): 37- Amurskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 2002), 375- 8; Kerimi, “Opium Use in Turkmenistan: A Historical 82; N. A. Shabel’nikova, “Vliianie Inostrannogo Faktora Perspective,” 1326. na Sostoianie Prestupnosti v Dal’nevostochnom Regione 121 Louise Shelley and Svante Cornell, “The Drug Trade v 20-e gg. XX v.,” in D. P. Bolotin et al. (eds), Rossiia i in Russia,” in Andreas Wenger, Jeronim Perović, and Kitai na Dal’nevostochnykh Rubezhakh, vol. IV, Robert Orttung (eds), Russian Business Power: The Role (Blagoveschensk: Izdatel’stvo Amurskogo of Russian Business in Foreign and Security Relations, Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 2002), 382-89. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 199; V. Ne- 118 Lebina, “Narkoman iz Narkomata i Klub Morfinistov krasov, “Vadim Tikunov,” Sovetskaia Militsiia 8 (1990): Revol’iutsionnogo Baltflota;” Shkarovsky, “Sem’ Imen 22; see also Louise Shelley, Policing Soviet Society: The “Koshki”: Rastsvet Narkomanii v 1917–1920-e gody,” Evolution of State Control (London and New York: 477; Panin, “Potreblenie Narkotikov v Sovetskoi Rossii Routledge, 1996), 145, where the author also refers to one (1917–1920-e gody),” 133. former high-level MVD official as her source. 32 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 narcotics on the entire territory of the former So- yet been questioned. 125 Secondly, against the viet Union.”122 backdrop of multiple perspectives on narcotic drugs, there have been several phases of writing However, it is perhaps Evgenii Roizman’s book and re-writing drug history in Central Asia, and in titled City without Drugs, where presenting “the the absence of solid and well-researched studies, beginning” of the drug problem in the early this history still awaits to be outlined even in 1980s serves the author’s political and nationalist broad terms. Without serious attempts to engage agendas in the most explicit manner: then, and re-engage with the ‘new’ old Soviet sources around the year 1986, Gypsies began to deal in and thus to address the second challenge, we will drugs; later came Tajiks, and “Gypsies, Tajiks and be bound to repeat the abundant inaccuracies other drug dealers” “raped” Russia; for this, which exist in secondary literature and effectively Roizman promises, all of them will be “sucking” – to reinforce the misrepresentation of drugs in both in their lives and afterlives.123 Central Asia as irrelevant until ‘yesterday’.

However, as we take this initial step of exploding CONCLUSIONS Soviet drug myths and delineating Central Asian drug history anew, it is the problematization of The answer to all such claims about drugs becom- narcotic drugs that needs to become one of the ing a ‘problem’ was given by Boris Kalachev at primary concerns. Instead of arguing about when least twenty years ago: “The problem of narko- drugs became a problem or, even worse, treating mania did not appear recently, it has been there drugs as an isolated problem and describing this and it did not disappear in the [19]50s, nor in the problem from the ‘war against drugs’ perspective, 1960s, nor in the following years.”124 Moreover, it makes more sense to problematize the problem drugs were a ‘problem’ as long as they were con- itself and to engage in the analysis of the making sidered a problem and as long as a certain socie- (and making up) of the problem at different ty, ‘free’ or ‘partially free’ from drugs, was ideal- stages in the past. ized. The insights that this paper provides in regard to As this paper makes clear, the nature of the drug drug use and drug histories in Soviet Central Asia ‘problem’ in the past is obscured when talking have multiple implications, and inevitably gener- about the history of narcotic drugs in Soviet Cen- ate further questions, which would need to be tral Asia. This is partly due to two interrelated addressed in future studies. By pointing to the contradictions. Firstly, despite the presence of repression of drug users as the Stalinist way of numerous published and unpublished sources on resolving the problem, this research suggests that various aspects of narcotic drugs in the Soviet Central Asia may not be the only region of the past, until now they have remained almost entire- Soviet Union where repressive measures might ly unknown to the majority of scholars whose have been applied against drug users in the late research deals with the subject. It is not surpris- 1930s. However, the existing literature on Stalin’s ing, therefore, that statements that Central Asian Great Terror in the USSR is virtually silent on this drug trade literature “consists mainly of United subject, mainly because it may be difficult to lo- Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports and a cate such data and because whatever materials handful of articles and working papers” have not are available, they may not reflect the repressed persons’ relationship with drugs. Whether or not the Soviet solution of the drug problem was a 122 Mumin Shakirov, Narkobizness v Rossii: Mnogolikaia matter of a union-wide repression would have Narkomafiia Rasshiriaet Prestupnuiu Deiatel’nost’ v Ros- serious policy bearings for the post-Soviet suc- sii, 6-7; Irina Komissina and Azhdar Kurtov, “Narkotich- cessor states, many of which are now desperately eskaia “Zaria” nad Tsentral’noi Aziei – Novaia Ugroza searching for the ‘cure’ of the ‘drug scourge.’ With Tsivilizatsii,” Tsentral’naia Aziia i Kavkaz 5 (2000): 121. 123 Evgenii Roizman, Gorod bez Narkotikov (Moscow: Izdatel’skii Dom “Granitsa,” 2004), 5-6, 512. 125 Svante Cornell and Niklas Swanström, “The Eurasian 124 Kalachev, “Narkomafia s “Borodoi”: Kogda Poiavilas’ Drug Trade: A Challenge to Regional Security,” Prob- u Nas “Chuma XX veka”?,” 29. lems of Post-Communism 53, no. 4 (2006): 25.

CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 their visions clouded by Soviet drug mythology, Soviet drug history that aims to draw a more bal- the governments of these states consider the en- anced picture of the consumption of narcotic lightenment and sanitation measures of the ‘very drugs and experiences of consumers needs to first years of the Bolshevik rule’ as the ones that take this point into account very seriously. The eliminated narkomania, while emerging evidence drug histories from Tajikistan and from other pe- demonstrates that they did not. ripheries that are briefly outlined in this work also demonstrate the importance of these regions By asserting that the Soviet response to drug use in Soviet history and elucidate the diversity of was to put drug users in prison, this paper also circumstances and factors that could potentially shifts the focus to Soviet penitentiary institutions lead to stunning divergences from parallel pro- as potential sites of consumption of narcotic cesses and practices at the ‘heartland.’ In that drugs, as well as fields of drug research. Clearly, sense, we may safely compare the center-based once in jail, many drug users were forced into Soviet historical writings that lay claim to all- involuntary abstinence, but unpublished data union representation to drug histories that cen- from law enforcement bodies suggest that there ter-stage patient addicts alone, with both types of was considerable drug use among certain groups accounts missing a whole range of other perspec- of prison population. Recognizing the presence of tives. the nexus between the Soviet state and narcotic drugs would be only one step, as such drug use Furthermore, this research also has a clear reso- would not have been possible without the nance for the contemporary post-Soviet re- knowledge and collaboration of prison authori- sistance to substitution therapy. This opposition ties and possibly a whole range of other state ac- is most explicitly manifested in Russia, where the tors, which is what we now observe, on a very government bans it through legislation, and also large scale, in post-Soviet Central Asia. This nex- in Uzbekistan, where it was discontinued in 2009 us, however, has yet to be adequately covered by based on the results of the internal evaluation by academic scholarship. the Ministry of Health. The Russian government, however, also aims to influence the drug policies Here, there are numerous questions of immense of neighboring republics, and this may be part of interest that could deepen our understanding of the explanation of the recent opposition to opioid Soviet (and post-Soviet) drug criminality and le- substitution therapy in Kazakhstan, where a sup- gality including the following ones: how these posedly independent evaluation group concluded ‘zones’ (with zona also being the Russian slang that this therapy was a “security threat” to the for prison) of consumption were linked with Kazakh nation.126 What currently happens in Ka- ‘zones’ of legal and illegal production of opiates, zakhstan is very reminiscent of the Soviet KGB’s and how they were sustained in both the Stalinist modus operandi for countering advocacy activi- and post-Stalinist environments; which networks ties against political abuse of psychiatry in the and actors were involved and what their motives USSR, whereby enlisted collaborator-scientists for interactions were; which mechanisms of mov- and other kinds of associates were tasked to pub- ing illegal drug commodities from producers to lish certain texts or otherwise disseminate mes- consumers were employed; and what the conse- sages that would aim to influence public opinion quences were when the above issues were and to discredit dissidents and other ‘anti-Soviet brought to the attention of Soviet leadership. elements.’ Thus, the new perspectives on the rela-

In relation to the above, no matter how tempting 126 Alisher Latypov, Asya Bidordinova, and Avet Khacha- it may be to look at the published medical texts trian, Opioid Substitution Therapy in Eurasia: How to for insights on drug use in the Soviet Union, those Increase the Access and Improve the Quality (London: texts often deal with people whose drug use sta- International Drug Policy Consortium, 2012), 10; K. Z. tus was known to the state and who were regis- Saduakasova, A. S. Subkhanberdina, O. N. Komarova, B. A. Kozhakhmetova, A. B. Sadykova, “Otchet Rabochei tered as ‘narkomans’ by psychiatrists and nar- Gruppy po Rezul’tatam Otsenki Khoda Realizatsii cologists. This group usually represented only a Pilotnogo Proekta po Opioidnoi Zamestitel’noi Terapii v fraction of people with a lifetime history of drug Gorodakh Pavlodar i Temirtau,” January 18, 2011. use or active drug users. Any Soviet and post- Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan. 34 CENTRAL ASIA RESEARCH PAPER No.1, August 2012 tionships between high-ranking Soviet psychia- trists and narcologists and the KGB that this re- search has highlighted, can serve as a powerful lens through which to re-examine not only some of the most disturbing episodes of Soviet medical history, but also a number of contemporary is- sues, in which the state and security organs’ in- terests may intersect and conflict with public health evidence and priorities.

Finally, I want to finish by emphasizing that so many aspects of Soviet drug history have yet to be explored in a comprehensive fashion, and I will briefly outline only some of them here. Among the most pressing areas of concern are the regulation of a very large Soviet opium econ- omy, the formation of drug control mechanisms, as well as processes and practices involved in the implementation and enforcement of control measures. Were drugs a ‘security’ issue in a sense that many scholars and politicians view them to- day? Or, perhaps, instead of undermining the state’s security, opiates enabled the Soviet regime to consolidate its power in revolutionary times? What role did the opium economy play in the lives of those communities that grew opium both legally and illegally? While the Soviet state did not take an active part in the formation of the in- terwar international drug control, its role became more prominent during the Cold War era.

The USSR’s relations with the United Nations and the World Health Organization drug-related structures have not yet appeared on the radars of any of the Soviet drug history scholars, but even the service of the KGB co-optee Eduard Babaian as the Chairman of the UN Commission on Nar- cotic Drugs makes this intriguing subject ripe for research. Another post-WWII phenomenon was the appearance of a ‘new’ group of the Great Pat- riotic War opiate addicts, and the question of ad- diction among these veterans has attracted much less (if any serious) attention from scholars than drug abuse among the Soviet Afghan war soldiers. Overall, drug users’ experiences, both those of patients and non-patients, are certainly among the most important areas for future research, be- cause they can generate perspectives that we may not be able to find in any of the state ar- chives and that may further problematize the writing of Central Asian drug histories with which this paper has been engaged.